How do you spot a Ravager? Easy. Look for those seeking to oppose the established Harbinger order, and succeeding. They shine like brilliant suns amongst the lower life-forms they were born with.

***Calvin***

The Brain leech’s appendages thrashed violently, showering Calvin with…nothing? The creature’s blood and guts fell through the floor, through Calvin, even vanishing in midair.

At least clean-up is gonna be easy.

The tangled ball of warped space winked out an instant afterward, whatever juice was still in there spent.

Harvester.

11/19 Bent remaining.

The Refraction spinner’s body collapsed into its component organs, neatly organized and well packaged. The skill must have known Calvin wanted the hands whole, because each one of the dozen or so hands of varying size were undamaged. He was interested to find out exactly how they worked, but Calvin didn’t have time to experiment with them.

He could feel the leech’s attention on the back of his neck.

Calvinian summoning.

Heart of the swarm.

Atom Ant

9/19 Bent remaining.

Calvin burst into wasps again an instant before another of the brain-leeches appendages slammed into his back, careening through his swarm of wasps to no effect.

This time his wasps were fist sized, able to carry the individual organs of the refraction spinner with their enhanced strength.

Time to go say hi.

Calvin’s wasps seized the organs and burst into motion, the gale of their passing kicking up a storm of swirling wind, lifting up a cloud of dust flowing behind them as they raced down the tunnel, aiming for the platform where the leech’s main body rested.

In a matter of seconds, Calvin arrived at the monstrosity, and his heart leaped into his throat when he spotted the village of the Abyss crowded around Kala, fending off countless attacks. Sal was lifting a bone staff above their heads, the filament wrapped around the top white hot, illuminating their desperate struggle even as the heat pushed the leech back.

It was only partially effective, though, as the creature attacked people through every avenue it could: Through the chilly stone floor, from people’s shadows, where the heat of the filament couldn’t reach, even people inside the circle weren’t completely safe, as the occasional proboscis appeared out of thin air to strike the back of a distracted combatant’s neck.

A dozen or so people were already down with gaping wounds in the back of their necks, unlikely to survive, but no one seemed to have had their brain eaten, thank the gods. Calvin didn’t remember it precisely, but he did know it was awful enough that he didn’t want to remember.

As soon as someone was taken down, the villagers around them would tear the pulsing crimson tube free with the victim’s hands.

Is there a reason for them to use the victim’s hands?

It’s probably…tuned into them somehow? So it can touch them? I’m not an expert at this.

The leech seemed especially interested in Calvin’s princess, and the only reason she was still alive was Beli Ma confounding the creature, and the villagers surrounding her, watching her back and occasionally moving her out of the way.

It helped that Sal’s hot filament was directly above her.

There wasn’t much more time to think as Calvin was approaching the scene at break-neck speeds.

Calvin’s swarm dipped down and then up before he canceled the summoning.

Calvin appeared in midair, flung up toward the creature’s main mass, a line of tumbling arms and organs in front of him.

Shifting.

Mayfly/Celestial body.

8/19 Bent remaining.

Calvin shifted his mass into the floor, and the tumbling organs in front of him slowed. Between the sheer adrenaline and the slowing effect of the spell, the parts didn’t seem to be moving that fast at all.

He felt the creature’s attention zero in on him, using whatever passed for 4th dimensional eyes. I don’t have much time.

Multi Mass Shaping.

7/19 Bent remaining.

There were six different organs that looked likely to house the Refraction spinner’s juices.

Calvin snatched a large, healthy looking hand out of the mess tumbling through the air and recreated it. He created an abyssal steel cap friction-fit to the back of the hand, with a large empty gap between the severed wrist and the back of the gap. Room for the goop.

He made sixty-three of them, each one lined up with the brain leech’s main body in an area he could see.

Then he filled each one with a slightly different mixture. Six hands got only one, ingredient, fifteen got unique combinations of two, twenty a combination of three, fifteen unique combinations of four elements, six unique combinations of five ingredients, and one with everything.

Simple math.

Sure you don’t want a control group with nothing in it?

Don’t be pedantic.

The hands appeared directly in front of the brain-leech’s enormous body, the abyssal steel caps on the back of the wrists forcing the goop mixtures manifested inside out through the creature’s channels. A large portion of the hands fizzled, or exploded, but a few shot out scrambled balls of warped space, interacting violently with the brain leech’s jiggling torso.

Wounds appeared on the things body and it flinched, stunned, as if it couldn’t believe what was happening.

The most energetic reaction that didn’t destroy the hand was a four-component one.. Lumpyred plus longdoodle, Sadsak, and Marble.

That’s what you’re calling the organs?

They don’t have official names, and I’m doing this on the spot! Cut me some slack! You try naming six unknown organs in a fraction of a second.

Calvin’s feet touched the ground.

Multi Mass Shaping.

6/18 Bent remaining.

Calvin created a massive, two hundred pound Spinner hand, right at the center of the brain leech’s body, then forced every ounce of the four-ingredient combination that he could through it. The resulting tangle of warped space was several orders of magnitude bigger than the ones before it.

The creature’s body seemed to resist for a moment as the warped space manifested inside it, swelling and twisting, it’s corpulent flesh jiggling in pain.

Then it exploded.

The brain leech’s goopy remains flew everywhere, through everything, refusing to interact with solid matter. In the space of a breath, there was no evidence the creature had existed at all, save for the wounded.

Dupdomancy has reached level 20!

+1 Will

Please choose a-

That’s a bummer, Calvin thought as the creature flashed out of existence. I was thinking about getting it as a summon. It is dead, right?

Maybe?

If that didn’t kill it, then I’m out of ideas, Calvin thought, his shoulders relaxing.

I can think of a couple reasons consuming it might be a bad idea, first on the list is the compatability issue that might cause you to explode or implode if you tried to eat the damn thing.

Well, I might want to add one of these to my summons, Calvin thought, looking down at the spinner hand in his grasp.

Couldn’t hurt to have a summon that can damage 4th dimensional beings.

I couldn’t agree more, especially since – ack, people! –

Elliot was cut off as a wave of Abyss dwellers crashed over Calvin, jostling him around and, congratulating him with ear-splitting voices and clapping him on the shoulder, making his hackles go up.

Too close!

“I’ve never seen anything like that!” Rufe said, pulling Calvin into an unwanted gardor hug, slapping him on the back before releasing him, holding his shoulders out at arm’s length while other plebes tried to touch Calvin’s shoulders and hair.

Hands were touching him all over the head and shoulders, and Calvin was becoming distinctly uncomfortable.

“That was some grade-A ass-kicking, boy! You just swooped in like a hero of legend, literally flying, and POW! Blew that thing up with a flick of the wrist. By the gods, how do you even do something like that!?”

“Don’t step on my organs!” Calvin blurted out to the gathered crowd of glowing faces, causing them to frown and lean backward ever so slightly.

I think this was where you were supposed to brag about how easy killing the monster was, and how they should follow your brilliant leadership. Oh well, you can get the next one, I guess.

“Oh, these?” Rufe asked, leaning down to big up a half-trampled Longdoodle. There was a treadmark over a large portion of the organ and a bit of clear goop seeping out.

“Yes,” Calvin said through clenched teeth, keeping his voice as neutral as possible. “Those.”

“Umm…Right. Oy,” Rufe said, slapping the nearby people crowding around Calvin. “All you ignorant sons of bitches get back to the wounded. We’ve got more important things to do than crowd the kid and step on his…whatever these are.”

Alerted, the crowd backed away, dispersing around the platform, returning their attention to those who actually needed it.

The thinning crowd revealed Sal, sitting on the floor in the distance, slumped against his staff in relief. The old glassworker’s heavy sighs were whistling through the gaps in his teeth.

It also revealed Kala, holding a hand over the back of a man’s neck, her expression focused as she tried to stem the bleeding.

I love a girl with the right priorities. Calvin thought, tiptoeing around his semi-stomped spinner remains.

“Anything I can do to help?” Calvin asked.

“Can your knick-knacks sew wounds?” Kala asked.

Loader bots should be able to perform first aid under emergency situations in the absence of a doctor, yeah. I remember reading about it in a magazine.

“Yep,” Calvin said.

“Then pull them out! And make several gallons of each wounded villager’s blood.”

Calvin hustled to comply, and the two of them threw their energy into preserving the wounded.

***Learner***

Wonderful! Yes, very good!

The manifold predator was unharmed, and Learner was elated. Both because the creature’s victory validated Learner’s decision to study it, and some other…odd reason, stemming from somewhere in the guts of learner’s current guise.

Strange that any amount of decision-making beyond food processing should be carried out by the guts, Learner thought, poking its own abdomen.

I wonder how it knew to seek out the Apex Predator’s weakness? How did it know there was a weakness at all? Was the meaning hidden in the four-limbed creature’s hoots somewhere?

Back home, the only creature that was undisturbed by the Apex predator was the Refraction Spinner. While the prey was sluggish and slow, when it raised its defenses against the Apex predator, the latter always withdrew.

In this matterspace, that same defense mechanism had been harnessed to bring the creature down, removing it from existence entirely.

Learner’s hand turned pale, and four more fingers emerged from the bottom of its palm. Each finger sprouted a hand made of units mimicking a Refraction Spinner’s. It took time and a bit of concentration, but eventually the nine tiny hands worked in sync to produce a stable, scintillating pattern over its palm.

Interesting.

Learner pushed a finger into the pattern, and the finger was turned into tiny chunks that fell through into Learner’s palm. The units rejoined it’s palm, while it regrew it’s finger.

With the exception of the specialized units that formed Learner’s ‘skin’. Locked into shape, they had no way of releasing each other and reabsorbing.

Specialized units are weak to separation in matterspace. Learner realized. That was the primary way damage was dealt in this matterspace, creating separation between units. And the refraction spinner’s defenses were quite good at it.

All other creatures seem to be made of specialized units, therefore the refraction spinner’s defense mechanism is far more dangerous to other creatures than it is to me.

Requires more study.

Learner returned its attention to the Manifold predator. It was absorbing the red units of the injured through its hands, while its offshoots preserved the others for consumption by pulling their units closer together. Yes, even recovering damage seems to be a matter of bringing units back into the form they had been before.

Interesting.

But not riveting. There was little to learn watching the manifold predator hoot at the Dark Prey Who Gazes Back. It seemed to pay more attention to that particular prey than the others, hooting at it and gazing at it’s front-lumps and back-lumps when its head was turned.

Probably sizing up nutritional value.

Requires more study…but not right now.

Learner had detected the pattern that the Manifold Predator was taking, and was now confident it could advance further, faster. Learner wanted to be confident in it’s defences before it made contact again.

It decided it would go out into the matterspace while the Manifold Predator was wasting time with lying still and hooting, and use that time to identify the defense and feeding mechanisms of each of the prey animals here, and master their use as weapons.

There was a quiet thump several hundred paces distant, too distant for the rowdy crowd of four limbed prey to hear, but not Learner. Learner was already far away from these prey, and much closer to the sound of the noise.

Leaner glanced over and saw the broken body of a four-limbed prey laying still upon the pile of bones.

…do these four limbed prey come fully formed from above the omnipull? Learner thought, glancing up at the matterspace above.

A moment later, a four-limbed prey fell through the stone matterspace farthest from the Omnipull and landed on top the other one, this one still moving somewhat.

A few minutes later, Learner hid while one of the four-limbed prey came and took away the one that was still squirming, hooting to each other.

Learner had an idea.

…

Calvinian Summoning has reached level 20!

+1 Will

Hours later, they had managed to preserve five of the eight remaining wounded, whose spines were severely damaged by the attacks.

Do you think they’ll be able to walk again? Calvin thought as he leaned up against the new stone railing, his body aching with released tension. Sitting with his back that close to the Abyss made him a little uneasy, but everywhere was equally dangerous, so why not?

Regular humans with no Breaks? Probably not. Legends who drink deadly poison to get a buzz? Yeah, chances are good as long as their friends keep them fed.

Calvin glanced up when Rufe and a woman walked by holding the wrists and ankles of a shivering Uleisan man wearing fine clothes.

“What’s up with him?” Calvin asked.

“This poor bastard got kicked down The Hole today. He was only third Break. He’s got too much Warp going through his system.” Rufe said. “We’re gonna put him under watch until he wakes up or turns into a gibbering ball of flesh.”

Calvin frowned. He recognized one of the merchants that he’d duped upon arriving in Uleis. That sucks. Maybe it was some kind of power struggle for Orson’s seat, and Calvin had crippled him, financially.

You didn’t kick him down here. No matter what you did to that guy. It was the assholes up top that did that.

True.

Calvin refocused as they carried the shivering man by.

Show me my choices.