Most of its life had been spent without a body.

A shifting amorphous mass drifting through the ocean of it’s brethren.

It made itself Predator to avoid becoming Prey. It made itself Prey to fool other Prey. So much of its own thought processes were consumed with what it was, and how that could benefit it, it left little time for other thoughts.

One moment, shifting, reacting, it had followed a prey into this…matterspace. A place where things had distance from each other, a concept so foreign to its mind that it sometimes tried to use the old methods of catching prey, which amounted to sitting and watching, it’s Will reverberating off the Mass like so many nothings.

But it was learning.

The blue creatures that hummed like Chetzela feeding off the Pulse were nowhere near as harmless. And they used Distance and their bodies to their advantage.

They made themselves large and hurt it. Made it diminish. It was painful. When it had made them small with its legs, they had been unable to hurt it any longer, but so too, had it been unable to harm the blue creatures.

Distance. The creature’s cunning use of this new reality’s laws was admirable.

Taking the form of the creature the wasps were protecting and imitating its call seemed to work for a short time, but the creature seemed to be able to unmask it, somehow. After it had deciphered the change, the assault with the strange goop out of the black shiny point in it’s back had redoubled, and it had stung horribly.

The attack hadn’t been like one of it’s own. If the blue creatures that broke away from the strange downward pull had been like it, their units would have battled directly with it’s own, perhaps creating an offspring in the midst of the battle.

Instead it had been a solid…something. Nothing there for its units to fight, only a liquid that brought death to those who touched it.

It had been forced to dump the affected units and some of the healthy ones around them.

Requires more study.

After the confrontation, it had looped back, seizing the use of distance, and it’s new vision to its advantage, following the blue creatures that broke away from the omnipull, until they turned back into a pale creature with four limbs.

Most interesting.

The creature was manyform. Like it.

The pale four-limbed creature went still. Perhaps it was waiting for it to attack again.

It experimentally tried to turn into one of the blue creatures.

Six limbs, good balance… It flexed its new midsection, and the units made it happen, bringing the stabby-pointy forward in a way that felt natural to this form, even creating a bit of the goop at the end of the black point.

Pain pain pain pain.

The units at the tip of the stinger died and it was forced to jettison them, losing even more of itself. Perhaps, replace goop with self? Things that took it into themselves became it, after all. It restructured. Similar to the first shape it had found, the eight-legged one, although the placement of the pain-goop glands were different and there was no sticky-goop glands, it was, all in all, very similar.

Can I fight the Omnipull and use it to make other creatures small? It thought to itself. From what it had seen, the blue creatures had been using the clear paddles attached to their backs when they had broken free form the omnipull.

It tried it.

The paddles waggled in place, preforming slow rotations in a pattern that seemed to be built into the blue-creature’s body.

However, nothing seemed to change. The omnipull was still affecting it.

Perhaps…faster? The paddles had been moving quite fast.

It moved the paddles faster.

The unique hum began to resound through the open space…a moment before the units at the tips of the paddles began to tear themselves off, jumping off into the distance on their own.

Pain pain pain pain.

Conclusion: Its units became unruly and decided to create distance when swung at very high speeds.

How then, did the Blue creature’s units stay put at the tips of its oars?

It changed into the form of the pale 4-limbed one, watching as the duskier one slumped over the first.

Were they mating? Was the dark one eating the light one? Was it a trap?

It decided it wasn’t worth the risk of finding out. Instead it studied the still figures from a distance, waving it’s foremost appendage, feeling the gentle pull of the disobedient units as they tried to pull away from his body..

Is this me, only? It thought, before it reached down with it’s front appendage and picked up a piece of this matterspace. It was pulled towards the Omnipull at a decent rate. It waved it’s arm with the matterspace chunk.

The pull on his units increased tenfold.

It’s not my units, it’s a quirk of this matterspace.

It let go of the matterspace chunk, and the matterspace chunk flew along the last path it had been following before it lost contact with the creature.

Interesting. Objects in Matterspace wish to continue on the path that they have been set upon and will continue moving in that direction unless acted upon by an outside force. So strange!

The creature was agog at the weirdness of it all. Not at all like the place it had come from. Where distance was a state of mind and thought blended seamlessly with action.

And the paddles… they must be interacting with more matterspace.

But how to prevent the paddles from flying apart according to this matterspace’s quirky rules? The blue creature’s paddles were far more resistant to the strange force than its own.

Perhaps it was the paddle’s differentiated, specialized units.

What a novel concept! Specialized body parts. The creature’s pale, eyeless head cocked to the side in wonderment. It could solve the problem by locking the units into a rigid structure, but those units would then be immobile and dependant on the main body to provide nutrients and protect them.

They might not even be able to think anymore.

It wasn’t particularly appealing, but it could see the benefit of having paddles that didn’t fall apart when in use, or goop tubes that weren’t destroyed by their own goop.

Requires more study. But first, need to make more units. For that, need Prey.

The creature used it’s limbs to make the pale creature and the dusky creature small, while making other parts of the strange world bigger.

It didn’t quiet understand why the light and dark brown creatures used only their back appendages for creating distance, but it faithfully tottered on, confident that the reason would reveal itself if it was faithful enough in its copying.

It needed to find something, make it big, then make it into more units. Then it could return and study the dangerous predators some more.

***Calvin***

“I can’t believe you wasted a whole six gallons of water on this.” Kala said, wrinkling her nose as Calvin stirred the Toad hide in the murky mixture, looking for all the world like the mythical witch.

“I didn’t,” Calvin said, sloshing a glass bottle of water around for her benefit.”

“It’s duplicated. I’m trying to separate out whatever causes the Toad hide to be extra tough.” Calvin said, his voice nasal through the bone pin he was using to seal his nostrils. “this time, I’m going to render the hide down into glue and see if that’s got the properties in it still. If it does, I can try mixing it with the Crystal Lattice’s catalyst and see what happens, maybe make an armor or something out of it.”

Like Elliot had said, half of all chemistry was boiling things and stirring stuff. Not exactly grand magic, but one did what one had to.

“Can I watch you experiment?” Kala asked, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.

“Sure, but it won’t be for another hour or-“

The princess was already gone, presumably to go take a few puffs of a sleep aid and lay down so she could connect her dream to his.

Shadowboxing was close enough to a dream for her to intrude on it, apparently, although she didn’t quite reap as many benefits from his skill, practice was practice, even if it was imaginary.

Just make sure not to tell her about her copy’s tendency to jump me.

Calvin shrugged and poked the floating hide back into the pot. When the water came close to expiring, Calvin carefully duplicated the simmering water and added it back in, keeping the temperature the same.

You think the Knick-knacks could pull enough iron out of these nightmare creatures to make a proper spoon? Calvin thought, casually tapping his bone spoon on the side of the loaner cookpot.

Probably. Wouldn’t be too hard for them to wire up an electromagnet out of an arm or something.

Might be more effort than it’s worth, though. I don’t plan on being down here forever, and I can just buy a better spoon on the surface.

Calvin idled the time away, thinking about other things as he rendered the hide.

Eventually the hide was all but gone, and Calvin was left with a pale slurry.

Filtering, another 25% of chemistry.

Calvin poured the slurry through several stages of different duplicated cloth, borrowed from clothing scraps the other villagers had lent.

The water sloshed through the first filter, leaving behind the thickest chunks of hide and fat, then proceeded to drip through each successive filter, leaving behind increasingly fine goop in each one.

He took the finished product, along with each seperate filter and put them each into bottles filled with duplicated air.

Calvin screwed the Knick-knack created lids on and canceled his spells.

Hope they don’t implode like last time.

The filters disappeared, along with the water and the air in the bottles, leaving only the product of the boiling, a thick paste in each of the four airtight bottles.

All the chemists of the world are gnashing their teeth in jealousy right now.

What, why?

Your Dupdomancy just let you skip a bunch of steps, along with all the cleaning you would normally have to do.

Oh. Cool.

Goddamnit, show more respect to all the work I had to do as an undergrad! Scrubbing bottles every day builds character.

Calvin inspected the contents of the four bottles for any sign that a substance was magically inclined, but none of them looked shimmery or otherworldly, and without any space, they weren’t inclined to evaporate rapidly, either.

We’ll start with the mush and work our way down, Calvin thought, closing his eyes.

Shadowboxing.

The village of Deinos appeared around him, his favorite place to practice.

“What took so long?” Kala asked, kicking her heels against the log spectator bench as she took a long drag off her pipe.

“What’s with the pipe?” Calvin shot back.

“I got Smoking accidentally.” Kala admitted, her cheeks flushing. “Uncle Bekvah says there’s no such thing as a bad Skill, only bad Users. In here I can smoke until I get sick and raise the Skill with no risk.”

She pulled out some grey plant matter from a sack over her shoulder and started stuffing it in her pipe.

“You got smoking as a skill?” Calvin asked incredulously. “Smoking?”

“I forgot about the Break.”

“You knew a Break was coming. You predicted those people dying. How could you not predict a stray Skill?”

“Sometimes these things happen, guy with a princess kidnapping Skill” Kala said, puffing perfect smoke circles. “Royals get a three-Skill leeway in their designed plan to account for accidents.”

“How many do you have left?” Calvin asked.

“One. I’m saving that skill slot for a special occasion.” Kala winked. Calvin was 99% sure it was something inappropriate.

“What are you smoking, anyway?” Calvin didn’t recognize it.

“Corpse vine. It makes everything stressful in small amounts, and in larger amounts it will send you on a terror-driven nightmare bender that will scar you for life.”

“Why on Marconen would you ever want to smoke something like that?” Calvin asked.

“Stress improves the speed of Skill improvement,” She said with a shrug. “And smoking by itself isn’t very stressful. Therefore… corpse vine.”

How does a smoked drug make everything stressful? Calvin wondered to himself.

It overclocks your Amygdala by forcing the neuroreceptors to stay flipped on much longer than they should. Tell her not to abuse that.

Huh, Calvin thought, not understanding a word of it.

“Elliot says you shouldn’t abuse that.”

“I don’t plan on it. Believe me, the ill effects of overuse are well documented in the Royal Skill Thesaurus.”

“Where did you kids come from?” Karen asked, coming out of her house, scowling at them.

“Matter of fact…Calvin? Kala? You’re looking…older. And dressed in rags.”

Calvin glanced down at his rough leather clothes.

“This is an imaginary space, I’m a wizard now, you’re a construct of my imagination and a Skill, no I don’t want to spar, I just like visiting my hometown.”

Karen processed that for a moment, blinking.

“Well, if none of this is real and you don’t need me for anything, I’m gonna go fuck the shit out of Ghol and his wife. Later.”

Karen waved a meaty hand as she tromped off, heading for the center of town, where the smith’s home was.

“That woman has seen some shit,” Calvin muttered to himself, watching Karen leave.

Normally he’d attribute that casual attitude to extremely high Stability, but with Karen’s low mental Attributes, it was probably good old life experience.

Calvin created a desk in front of him and dropped each of his seven bottles of monster extract on top.

Lets see…

He glanced over at Kala, whose eyes were following Karen, jaw dropped. Calvin saw the instant the thought occurred to her, as she glanced back at him, her eyes shining with mischief.

“So, this is an imaginary space, and there are no consequences… or observers…”

“End of the day,” Calvin said, holding up a hand. “I promise. I can’t trust myself not to get carried away.”

“You better get carried away.” Kala muttered with a scowl.

Calvin duplicated the hide and fat he’d skimmed off the top, putting a needle through them. The hide gave way like soft butter, falling apart at the needle’s touch. Excellent.

The next bottle had a thick, tacky substance that provided some resistance to Calvin’s pin, but not much.

I think it’s just glue. But it might not be normal glue.

Calvin smeared some of the paste on the table and set a block of wood on top of it, then move on to the next.

The materials got successively harder to push a pin through, even as they turned more and more liquid, until Calvin got to the last one, which reversed, becoming very easy to push through, as it was a slightly gritty dust.

Calvin turned to the material in the last filter, which had the most concentrated effect and started experimenting with it.

The Toad essence evaporated quickly outside the bottle, but Calvin was able to smear some on his arm.

It felt cold as it evaporated quickly, leaving his arm a little chilly and tingly.

He tried pushing a pin into his arm.

Calvin couldn’t feel any kind of difference, the pain wasn’t lessened, and his skin didn’t show any kind of enhanced effect. The pin slid in without too much effort.

I didn’t expect it to be easy.

He conjured a large bottle full of the substance and began mixing it with different amounts of the crystal Lattice juices. The effect wanted to evaporate, so he needed some kind of binder to make it retain it’s physical shape.

Time to start alchemizing.

***2 hours later***

“This is a lot more boring than I thought it’d be.” Kala said, head resting on her palm.

Science is boring, but effective.

Trying combination 12/2/16.

Calvin flicked a ball of scintillating blue paste onto the table. The solid blue material exploded with energy, sheathing the entire table in transparent force in the blink of an eye. It was a nearly invisible coating, but it was now nearly impossible to poke a tack into the wood, the outer layer seemingly repelling the tack more than actually being hard.

Calvin’s heart leapt in his chest at the first major breakthrough after the crystal spears.

Abyssal Alchemy has reached level 2! 10% Correction.

Spell formula created. Would you like to name it?

Ooh, ooh, call it Mage Armor.

Not until we test it.

Calvin took out a ball of the thick blue paste and lowered his body mass as much as he could, slowing perceived time. He smacked it with a hammer.

The blue ball turned into a liquid as it was catalyzed by the shock of impact, then wrapped itself around the closest whole object, creating a difficult to penetrate field of repelling energy, stretched so thin it turned transparent.

“neat.” Calvin said, then tore off another little ball, smashing it against his chest.

His skin turned cold for an instant, his eyeballs turning bleary for a moment as something irritated them.

Now the biggest test. Can I still breathe?

Calvin opened his mouth and inhaled.

No problems here.

He poked his own eyeball.

I feel nothing.

AWESOME.

Calvin repeated the process with duplicated paste, and it was still effective.

He had successfully created a spell component.

Label it Mage Armor. Calvin thought, a manic smile bubbling out of him.

Spell formula recorded. System recommends physical backups in case of file corruption or memory loss.

Wizard king, here we come.

Next step, I want one of those Diffraction spinners. And a Lure. And a Husker. I can’t WAIT to see how the Husker’s abilities interact with the other components. Maybe I can make guided spells! or telekinesis without having the spell for it!

***

Oh, no.

Kala watched Calvin dancing in front of his little alchemy station. His energy and passion were part of what made him cute, but the boy had just been offered S-E-X, albeit wordlessly, and Kala was absolutely sure he had just forgotten all about it.

I suppose it’s for the best. If he got that single-minded about me, he probably wouldn’t get any work done.

It still rankled, though.

“Kala!” Calvin said, snapping his fingers and whirling to point at her. The room around them changed to The Filter. “We’re going to go scout out the abilities of the Warp monsters with Shadowboxing so we can safely bag a few of them!”

“And then?” she asked expectantly.

“More spells.” Calvin said, dramatically clenching his fist.

Kala sighed inwardly. He was still cute, though.

Maybe I should drug him with Wet Dream, she thought, clearing out her pipe and bringing out the purplish bud. Nah, that’s bad form.

***

Calvin was walking through one of the tunnels southeast of the Crack, keeping his head on a swivel for attackers, but not overly anxious. He was shadowboxing to learn the layout of the tunnels and what kind of predators to expect before he went through in person to hunt some powerful compon – monsters –.

There was no inherent risk.

I’ve got to show Kala a good time after this, Calvin thought to himself, hands in his pockets as he glanced around. He hadn’t forgot about her, he was just…nervous. Can’t put it off any longer, no matter my bravado. When I come back from this, I’m gonna march right up to her, kneel down and say, ‘princess Kala, will you have hardcore imaginary sex with me?’

Probably have a bit of that terror induced out of body experience, but I’ll get over it.

Something slammed into Calvin’s back, throwing him to the ground, and a hot pain shot through the back of his neck, burrowing into his brain.

“Gah!” Calvin shouted, trying to push himself up, his limbs turning weak as the pain began to turn ice cold.

Calvin was walking through the tunnel, hands in his pockets

But I’ll get over it…Wait a sec.

Calvin glanced over his shoulder and saw a bizarre creature phase through the wall. It’s body looked like a pale worm, it’s head looked like a butterfly’s proboscis and all.

As Calvin was throwing his hands up, Something struck him in the back, knocking him to the ground, a searing pain travelling through his spine.

Calvin desperately tried to put his hands under him and push away.

…

Calvin glanced over his shoulder, flinching as he saw the oncoming worm-thing.

It’s looping somehow, MOVE!

Calvin dropped and rolled, but something caught him in the back, sending pain through his entire body as it began to burrow into his brain.

It got further this time.

The next time it looped, the drill was already in Calvin’s head, and his consciousness was beginning to scatter.

Stop the Shadowbo----

It looped.

It’s looping, Stop the Sha

Stop the

Stop

Sto-

Ss

Ssssssss

Ssssssss

Calvin sank into a endlessly looping mirage of pain and brain drills, his point of view slowly altering as he became the monster that was eating him, feeling everything it felt, wanting what it wanted, his mind scattered to the winds, individuality lost as he floated in a sea of pain and primal hunger, rapidly changing into something not entirely human.

After what felt like an eternity of being endlessly consumed by the abomination, something changed.

“Calvin, wake up!”

Calvin’s eyes didn’t move. He saw her, but he couldn’t recognize her. He couldn’t recognize anything, because he wasn’t anything right now. Just a piece of meat rapidly morphing into an abomination, and yet going nowhere.

The blurry brown difference in the orange-white ocean of his fluttering eyelids pulled a glowing hand back.

A second…or maybe an hour later, a concussive blast rocked his head to the side.

-1 Stability

Error detected.

-1 Stability

Malignant logic loop detected.

User protection subroutines activated.

Compartmentalizing Malignancy….

Dumping….

Dumping complete. 2 Stability lost in the process.

Calvin gasped, his eyes shooting open. Kala wasn’t above him, rather she was laying beside him, her eyes slowly blinking open before fixing on him.

The slap was inside of Shadowboxing?

“Are you okay?” She asked, her voice soft.

“I think so.” Calvin said, blinking the sand out of his eyes. “I just lost four Stability, and I can’t remember much of what just happened, except that it sucked.”

“Your brain got eaten and added to a Brain leech.” She said with a wince. “You spent two hours simulating what that would be like in Shadowboxing.”

After I got Kala to wake you up, I bound the memory to a couple points of Stability and booted it from the System. Better than you getting crippling super PTSD.

“Thanks,” Calvin said, sitting up with a groan, holding his aching head. “Not looking forward to raising my Stability again to make up for it.”

Not with my Warp, you’re not. Not until we get the rest of your Skills.

“First things first,” Calvin groaned, picking himself up, until he was on one knee, looking the slender girl in the eyes as she sat up in bed, watching him with a delicate frown.

“Princess, will you have hardcore, sweaty, ball-slapping imaginary sex with me?”

“I don’t really feel like it at the moment,” She said airily.

“Yeah I guess I understand that,” Calvin said, a little needle poking his heart. A guy nearly dying and turning into a drooling mess is probably not much of a turn-on.

“Maybe some other time, then.”

“But…” Kala said with pursed lips, and a thoughtful look, “Since you need to recover your Stability, I suppose I could be charitable and help out…In your dreams.”

Sex raises Stability?

Dude, sex is like, the easiest way to raise Stability. Where have you been?

“Constantly under threat of death, that’s where I’ve been, you asshole!” Calvin shouted out loud.

Touchy. You need to get laid more often.