***Jinnei***

“What are we gonna do with all these ships, Ma – sir?” Kip asked as Jinnei was posing dramatically at the stern. She preferred he call her sir. Felt more captain-y.

She looked out at the dozens of ships sailing in front of them in a tight cluster, under her watchful eye.

“We’re going to make the largest pirate fleet the world has ever known,” she said, her chest puffed up.

“Really?” Kip asked, brow raised.

“Fuck no!” She turned to the deck where the rest of the Malkenrovian pirates could hear her. “We’re gonna sell the ships to Gadvera, and I’m gonna split the profits with all of you! If they even give us half of what they’re worth, each and every one of you is going to be a wealthy man!”

That got a cheer. Ships were expensive. It might be an exaggeration to say it would make them wealthy, but they definitely wouldn’t have to work for a couple years if they didn’t want to.

Thank the gods she carried her writ of privateering in her vest, because the old Karen’s folly had joined with the reef below.

***Calvin***

Shifting

Calvin was sitting in front of Karen, juggling stones as he used the limitless Bent of Shadowboxing to practice the skill.

“It seems…Kinda pointless.” She said, chin resting on her palm.

“I saw it work on a Legend.” Calvin said. “And I’ve got at least three ideas I’ll bet the cobalts never thought of.”

“You’re sure of that?” she asked, raising a brow.

“Yup.”

Shifting.

“Care to tell me what they are?”

“Not until I’ve gotten them to work,” Calvin said.

Karen rolled her eyes.

Shifting.

Shifting has reached level 5!

Shifting level 5: : 25% shift, 5 minutes, targets limited to 125 pounds in mass.

+1 Will

Please choose an Ability or Mutation:

Sliding Shift: Mass may be freely moved back and forth for the duration, to the limit of Shifting.

Multiple Shift: 1 extra target/5 levels in Shifting.

Shift Storage: Adds an extradimensional space Mass can be shifted to. Limits and duration match that of Shifting.

^Does not actually store things, just allows the User to make both objects lighter.

Extended Shift: duration becomes level squared.

Mutations:

Center of Mass: User may move their center of mass 2 inches per level of Shifting, at Will.

Xeno-Adaptation: Mass increases or decreases relative to the gravity of the planet to keep the User at the same perceived weight.

Oh, wow, Center of mass is exactly one of the ideas I had for how to use the spell, Calvin thought. Xeno-Adaptation…

I don’t think I’ll be going to other planets any time soon.

There were a lot of effects, but he’d already decided on Sliding Shift before he’d even reached level 5. The ability to adjust the mass back and forth without spending extra Bent to make it happen was absolutely worth it.

I choose Sliding Shift.

Calvin’s mind tingled for a moment as the technique settled into place, then he began doing what any self-respecting wizard would do in these circumstances:

He started playing with himself.

Shifting.

Calvin selected either half of his body as a separate entity and began shifting mass from one side to another as he moved. He’d long since learned with Dupdomancy that the definition of ‘one object’ was purely objective.

It was a very strange rhythm to get into: deposit mass into the anchored side of the body, push the light side of the body forward, flip the orientation, then do it again.

It wasn’t perfectly what he’d been trying to do, because he needed Multiple Shift and another five levels to properly select both his feet and weigh them against the rest of his body.

Once he got the hang of that…he could run on air.

Not exactly flying.

I’ll take it.

Calvin kept at it, shifting his mass back and forth as he ran, face-planting in the soft dirt of the practice yard, over and over again.

“You move like a pregnant guar.” Karen said with a yawn.

“Gotta crawl before you can walk.”

“What is that, a haughty Gadveran wizard saying? You too good for me now that you’re in wizard school?”

That was Calvin’s cover story this time. Karen was too dim to experience the existential horror of an extremely limited life, but that came with it’s own problems.

“Well, I’m bored. You said none of this is real and you won’t get hurt if I knock you around a bit right?” She asked, rolling up her sleeves.

And there she goes again.

Not unexpected. He had brought her around this time for this specific reaction from her. But it was still sooner than Calvin was hoping. He wanted to get a bit more used to the spell before Karen started whaling on him.

Unfortunately, she knew the best way to improve at something was to stress-test it.

Calvin dismissed the current spell and laid out a new one, targeting his upper body and a large swath of the packed dirt beneath them. Immediately he lightened his upper body as Karen came barreling in.

Oh, once I get Multi-split, I can target several different spots on my body as well as the earth, that’ll allow a huge variety of – Calvin’s thoughts were interrupted by a massive fist sweeping toward his chin.

His spine nearly folded in half as he bet backwards to avoid it.

And yet he wasn’t off balance. Not quite as bad as he’d expected anyway. This isn’t so bad.

You’re like one of those inflatable punch clowns. I’m sure your mother approves.

Calvin leapt up and tried to circle around behind his foster mother before she could recover her balance, but the woman lashed out with an elbow, catching his guard right in front of his face.

Now Calvin’s light weight worked against him as he skidded backwards. Let’s see, I normally weight a hundred and sixty pounds, and I reduced one hundred and twenty five of it by twenty-five percent, so that means…

I lost about thirty some pounds…

Calvin had truly become a punching doll.

On the other hand, the damage didn’t feel quite as severe as it usually did, because his body had slid away from the impact, rather than take all of it.

Do you think I could reduce my mass to nothing to prevent taking any damage from an attack?

Under the right circumstances, yes, but it also sounds like a great way to get yourself hurt.

Let’s try the other way.

Calvin lunged forward once his backward slide came to a stop, aiming to clash against Karen’s bulk. She must weight something like two hundred and forty…all muscle. If he gained instead of lost weight…

Calvin drew the mass back out of the ground as he charged, plus the weight of the earth itself, bringing his total weight up to the middle of the one-nineties.

Karen blocked his fist with a cocky grin and blinked in surprise when he nearly threw her off balance. She adjusted her heel backward, seized his fist and rolled him over her hip as easily as a sack of grain.

One problem with raising the mass of his upper body was the higher center of gravity and therefore worse balance. Somehow Karen intuited that in a fraction of an instant, deciding to use throws on him.

Calvin shifted the mass away from his body and back into the earth just before he hit the ground, lowering the impact. If the old man could raise the mass of an object to increase the damage, Calvin didn’t see why it wouldn’t work in reverse.

Only weighing a hundred and thirty pounds, the landing didn’t even knock his breath out of his chest.

“Oooh, that’s tricky,” Karen said with an amused smile. “I like it.”

“Just wait until it hits level ten,” Calvin said, flinging himself into the air from his supine posture, drawing out all of his strength to aim a punch at her face.

She caught him, midair, with a quick jab.

“You been pumping iron at that sissy school of yours?” She asked, using her superior reach to break his nose. “The Calvin I knew only had Six Strength.”

How am I supposed to beat this? Calvin thought, staggering backward. Even as he improved Karen remained some kind of insurmountable wall.

Maybe she’s got eight Breaks. To get an eighth Break was tantamount to watching an entire kingdom put to the sword. Calvin had no idea what she might have gone through to get there, but it was a lot.

“It’s a mutation.” Calvin said, holding his hand to his nose to stem the bleeding and breathing through his mouth. He’d long since gotten used to bloody noses.

“A mutation!? What kind of fool would-“ she shook her head, looking at him with exasperation. “You got lucky, kid. What’s it do?”

“Raises my Body by two each time I kidnap a princess.”

Karen broke into a gale of laughter.

“By all the gods, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of! Are you serious?”

Calvin nodded.

“You’re not fooling with me?”

Calvin shook his head.

“So you’ve kidnapped actual princesses?” she asked with a disbelieving smirk.

“Three of them.”

“Three?”

“Three.”

“What the Abyss do you get up to in that increasingly made-up sounding school of yours!?”

“Okay, it’s a little made up. I just didn’t want you to worry.”

“I’m not worried about you, you little monster, I’m worried about everyone else!”

“Thanks for that,” Calvin said sourly. Karen’s vote of confidence was hard to separate from insult.

Karen lunged forward, and Calvin started using Beli Ma to redirect her fists away from him. He needed to work Shifting seamlessly into his strategy, and for that he had to start using them all at once. For the most part, Calvin kept himself light to speed himself up and reduce damage from getting flung around, mixing it with the occasional spike in mass when he went for an attack.

It was the most basic usage of the skill, but he needed to master the basics before he could start walking on air.

“You’re turning into a slippery little bastard, aren’t You?” Karen growled as he tugged her fist away from his face, feeling the whoosh of air rush past his cheek. Karen was taking things up a notch. He felt her knee coming up with his extra sensitive Tarka skin, and used his left hand with a whorl of Bent to draw her knee off the correct path, missing his chest and tugging her off balance.

Karen leapt backward after a few more seconds of Calvin slipping around and redirecting a fair number of her attacks. The ones that got through, though, Calvin was feeling.

“Tell you what,” She said, eyeing Calvin appraisingly. “I know where to find another princess you could kidnap without too many consequences. You beat me in a fight, and I’ll tell you all about her.”

Another princess? Calvin thought to himself. How many princesses would a farmer know? Although, she used to be a Legend, so I guess rules don’t really apply to her.

“If you can beat me.” She said.

“No holds barred?” Calvin asked. He hadn’t gone full-tilt against Karen since…the first time he’d used shadowboxing against her. It had always been to train a specific facet of his skillset.

“Yeah, show me what they’re teaching you at that nonexistant school of yours, brat,” She said, motioning for him to approach.

“Alright,” Calvin said, and the peasant garb disappeared, replaced by his light armor and his two bandoliers.

Calvinian summoning

Atom Ant

Calvin created three huge wasps and sicced them on Karen.

Karen ignored them.

In a flash of light, his foster mother was covered in shimmering full plate and wielding a massive two-hander, hurtling through the attacking wasps and bearing down on him.

Crap, I need to dodge, and I don’t think Beli Ma is enough to stop that.

Heart of the swarm.

Calvin burst into wasps as the sword cleaved through the mass of insects where his chest used to be.

“Gah!” Karen gave a frustrated shout as the wasps began to bite and sting.

She pulled the sword back, glowing brightly.

This can’t be good.

“Omnislash”

Her sword burst into an odd fractal image, and every wasp in Calvin’s swarm was bisected, even the ones clinging to her skin.

Calvin reappered a foot above the ground, covered in tiny cuts. He hit the dirt rolling, ignoring the earth in his cuts as a massive sword buried itself in the training yard inches away from his shoulder.

Karen was swinging the sword like it was a twig, yanking it out of the ground and sweeping it at his waist in a fraction of a second.

Calvin leapt into the air, desperately twisting his body out of the way while applying Beli Ma with his right hand to change the trajectory, as well as casting a spell.

Shifting.

Calvin targeted the sword and a section of the practice arena, shifting over thirty pounds of mass into the blade.

Or at least, that was the plan.

User’s Bonded Weapon resisted the effects. Caster was unable to penetrate Ability: Strength of Will.

Damnation!

The blade swept under him with a whizz, then Karen pulled it back up, aiming at Calvin’s body floating in space.

Calvin considered using Sense Grafting to disorient her, but dismissed it. If her sword could resist the ability, she wouldn’t be that far behind, either. How am I supposed to fight this when she’s swinging a two-hander like a switch and I can’t use control spells to slow her down?

In a desperation move, Calvin aimed for a tie, his fingers flying down to the vials on his person.

Mass Multi-Shaping

Calvin selected the god’s fire, the brown crystals of frozen Boom-juice, a sharp chunk of the steel of the god’s fire vial, and his fragment of thick dragon leather.

Note, a belt made out of dragon leather would eliminate the need for a pocket.

Noted.

Calvin always seemed to think of better ways to do things mid-fight. Probably because inefficiencies and weaknesses became blatantly obvious.

Calvin created an explosive between them, with shrapnel toward Karen, and a thick, multi-layer blanket of tough dragon leather on the other side, facing Calvin.

With a crack, the blanket hit him in midair, propelled by the sudden expansion of gas, catching his body like a vicious punch from a mad titan and sending him spinning off the edge of the practice yard.

Calvin landed in a heap, body aching all over. There was a pinprick pain in his shoulder that rapidly gained strength until it felt like someone was holding a hot poker to his chest.

He gasped with pain as he checked the wound. One of the sharp pieces of shrapnel must have bounced of Karen’s armor and lodged itself in his shoulder.

Damn. At least I dodged the swo – In midthought, a glimmer of steel caught the corner of Calvin’s eye, and Karen’s sword came spinning through the dust of the explosion.

Shaping.

Calvin touched the Jerrytanium and created a thick dome of it around himself.

There was a horrendous screech, and the dome was sheared off halfway up, nearly severing Calvin’s head.

How is that possible? Calvin demanded, even though he knew the answer. Her strikes were reinforced with Bent and his summons were not.

We need to find a way to fix that.

On it.

Multi-shaping.

Calvin ducked behind what was left of the dome and clapped his hands over his ears, unleashing a full three hundred pounds of Boom-juice on Karen’s last known location.

A tremendous explosion rocked through his chest and rattled his teeth. It felt like a giant had deigned to pick him up and slap him around a little before setting him back down.

Calvin staggered to his feet, coughing. Bits and pieces of the village of Deinos were raining down on him while he strained every sense to locate Karen.

He felt the heat of Karen’s Gaze from behind him.

Shifting.

Calvin separated his body between right and left again, flooding his right side with mass while pivoting on his right foot.

Once his left side was moving fast enough he flipped the mass back over to the other side of his body, and his suddenly heavier left side pulled him out of the way of Karen’s downward swing, as if an invisible hand had swept him out of the way.

From the outside, it probably seemed as if something else was moving him.

Shifting has reached level 6!

Shifting level 6: 30% shift, 6 minutes, targets limited to 216 pounds in mass.

Calvin equalized the two sides of his body as he charged forward, drawing his wand.

He slid under Karen’s swing and conjured an extra thick plate of jerrytanium between the two of them when she tried to murder him on the backswing. Her sword buried itself partway through the ridiculous material, and she spent a fraction of a second tearing her sword out of it.

Calvin took a swinging posture, and shifted his mass to the left side of his body, making his right side lighter.

Shaping.

Calvin swung his lightened right arm faster than he ever had before, with his arm giving him less inertia resistance relative to his strength, propelling the jerrytanium marble at the end of the wand faster than it had ever gone before.

He isolated a tiny spike of Jerrytanium in the wand and replicated it as a three-hundred pound spear hurtling toward Karen at blinding speeds.

Karen threw up her two-handed sword, and a shower of sparks filled the dust-choked air as she batted the projectile aside with a deafening clamor of ringing steel.

“Ha, ha, ha!” Karen laughed, grinning widely as blood dribbled out the sides of her helmet, likely her ears had burst with the explosives

She ran a thumb over the deep gouge in her summoned sword, watching him carefully. “You’ve seen some action, kid. Are you a Legend already?”

“Technically, but I haven’t grown into it yet,” Calvin said, holding a hand over his wounded shoulder.

“Hmm…Ready for round two?”

“I’m inches away from passing out here.” Calvin said. He was getting a little lightheaded from the shrapnel in his shoulder, and Karen seemed like she’d just gone for a brisk walk. “Think we could put this off for another time?”

“When you’re on the back foot is the best time to improve!” Karen shouted, running toward him, because of course she would.

Without thinking, Calvin swept an arm forward, cupping his palm to catch the air.

Shaping

Calvin selected an area of air between himself and Karen, and then he selected the ground.

The gust of wind he made gained sixty-four pounds of mass a fraction of a second before it impacted against her face, causing the Legend to stagger, missing her swing with the massive sword.

Calvin leapt into the gap as Karen recoiled, aiming to stab her through the eye-slit of her helmet with the knife that shot out of the skin of his palm.

“Tricky…Bastard!” Karen shouted, instinctively turning their head to the side and presenting him with the Ability reinforced steel of her helmet.

Calvin’s knife skittered off the edge of her armor, and before he could make another attempt, a steel fist caught him in the stomach and sent him flying. His light armor caught the worst of it, but Karen’s fist did leave a him with a massive dent pressing against his diaphragm and the sudden urge to throw up.

Calvin took a deep breath and tried to say something witty.

“Urk,” He barely managed to suppress the urge to throw up all over his imagination.

“You’re so much better than you used to be, kiddo.” Karen said, lightly tapping her sword on the back of his neck, indicating a win. “Still not enough to take my job, though.”

“Thanks,” Calvin gasped into the ground. He had a ways to go before a one-on-one against Karen felt doable.

He felt a pinch on his side, coming from the real world.

“Looks like practice is over,” Calvin said.

“later,” Karen said, waving as the armor surrounding her vanished into nothing.

***

Calvin opened his eyes, blinking the sand out as the heat of the desert returned to him.

“What is it?”

“Uleis is in sight,” Ella said, pointing.

The glass city loomed above them in the distance, the blue palace rising above everything else.

“Is the Uleisan gear spread out for sand-pirates to loot?”

Sand pirates were like the buzzards of the desert. They would make sure to pick the battlefield clean. The army’s weapons showing up in their hands would be an excellent distractor.

Calvin had briefly considered looting and reselling all the valuables before deciding it wasn’t worth the certain, sudden, violent, public backlash.

“Yep.”

“And nobody kept any of it?”

“Not a thing.”

“All right,” Calvin said, slapping his cheeks to pull himself out of his stupor. He summoned Nadia.

Chained Spirit

14/16 Bent remaining.

Nadia hit the sand in front of him, her expression difficult to read, but her eyes flared with equal parts anger and lust.

Weird girl.

“Nadia, were there any stragglers?”

“No.”

He couldn’t feel any misdirection in her gaze.

“Did you have a good time?”

“No.”

That’s a lie.

“That’s a shame.” Calvin unsummoned the blue-eyed princess in a burst of green mist.

“Make the rounds. Make sure every leader has briefed their people multiple times. I want everyone crystal clear about what happened out there. our stories will match, and if someone’s a blabbermouth, make sure they’re in a hole as soon as we make the city.”

Ella nodded and turned to leave.

“Now,” Calvin said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s see what Gadvera can do to contribute to the Widows and Orphans Fund for this poor, grief-stricken city.”