“Welcome, great heroes!” The matriarch of the Ooze Weaver tribe said, making the odd flag-waving motion as they approached.

Norlocks didn’t have their own language. They were asocial creatures and generally not intelligent enough to learn speech until they reached a size impossible by normal standards. The language must have come from the Ooze weavers, and Calvin was pleased to see himself proved correct. Eating the norlock’s tongue had given him access to ooze weaver language

Didn’t do anything for body language, though.

Rather than assembling into the same size-chevron as before, Calvin simply walked up, copied her salute, and greeted the chieftain in her own tongue.

“Greetings, chieftain, my name is Calvin Gadsint. In the week since we last parted, I’ve been learning your language, which is quite a beautiful one, I might add.”

“You’ve learned our language…In a week.” The chieftain said, forgetting her salute and dropping her forelegs to the ground.

Now tell her you only know that sentence and this one explaining it.

“That can’t be possible, you’re…”

“Small?” Calvin asked, ignoring Elliot’s bad advice. “Yes, size and authority are often linked in human culture, but not in this particular case. I am the leader of expedition.”

“Size equates intelligence, actually.”

“Really?” Calvin asked, eyebrows raising.

So the brain keeps growing with the body? Oh man, that sounds so exploitable. Can we dissect some of them? I need it for my biomancy studies. Please? Pleeeease?

“That’s fascinating.” Calvin tapped his skull. “Human thinkmeats are fixed in size, since our heads don’t grow over time, so size isn’t an accurate metric of intelligence.”

“Did I just call a brain thinkmeats?” Calvin whispered to himself before shaking his head. “Anyway, we’re getting off topic. I reviewed the conversation from a week prior once I had a firm grasp of your language, and realized that you asked us to feed ourselves to the Norlock.”

The slime on the prawn-faced spider dripped as it flinched away from him.

“Um…that’s not…”

“Don’t worry,” Calvin said, holding up a hand. “As of right now I am the only human capable of speaking like the People, and I have told my men that you desperately requested their aid. I see no reason to complicate our relationship at this stage.”

Calvin lowered his voice.

“I might ask you to perhaps rewrite history a little on your end, as well, to prevent future complications.”

“Already done.” The chieftan said, bobbing her body in agreement.

“So,” Calvin said, glancing up at the many shimmering, slimy mucus sacks full of fish, crude stone tools, and shiny river stones, all of which hung from the branches of trees, looking for all the world like dangling snot. “Is all that for us?”

“Oh my, I was so distracted by your being able to speak that I lost track of…” The man-sized bug seemed to compose herself for a moment, then gave the same greeting wave as before. “Welcome great heroes! Long have our people yearned for the death of the demon known as Yninquiak. Toward this end, we have offered the warrior who could vanquish the demon great treasure,” She raised a foreleg and pointed at the snot-bags full of fish and stone.

Welp. Got a good idea of the tribe’s wealth now, at the very least. They’re about to get a whole lot wealthier, though.

Once Calvin started selling their ooze internationally, anyway.

I think they’d be an excellent buyer for glass and steel tools, but I’d have to find ways to use the ooze for more than a lubricant in order to raise their value. I can tell they’ve been able to achieve unbelievable tensile strength with it. I should start there.

“I would be overjoyed to accept these treasures,” Calvin said with a formal bow.

“In addition, I am proud to offer a breeding contract for my daughter, Ykuingi, the finest specimen of breeding age in our entire village.”

The giant snot-monster gestured to another, incrementally smaller snot-monster standing beside her, shifting around with apparent nervous energy.

Calvin’s eyes narrowed. I hate being right.

“Come here,” Calvin demanded, pointing to the ground in front of him, causing the chieftain to recoil momentarily before scuttling toward him.

“Are you serious?” Calvin whispered once the leader of the ooze-weavers was close enough. “You should be well aware that I don’t want to put my seedtooth anywhere near that, and vice versa.” Also did I just call my dick my ‘seed-tooth’??

“I understand you confusion, but I discussed this with the other elders, and they believe that sending Ykuingi along with your expedition for the duration of a breeding cycle would be an excellent way to gain more knowledge about your people, and vice versa. We can honor the letter of our promise to give her first clutch to the heroes while accomplishing diplomatic ends instead.”

“How long’s a breeding cycle?” Calvin asked quietly.

“Three months.”

“So let me get this straight. You don’t actually want me to have sex with her, and are just taking advantage of the promise to establish a foothold in human relations?”

“Yes, well summarized.”

“I’m just going to introduce her as a diplomat to my people. The nuance will be a lot better.” And I’ll only get teased by my friends who already know about my princess stealing skill.

“That is fine.”

“Well then.” Calvin said, motioning for the chieftain to step back and raising his voice again. “I accept the breeding contract with great enthusiasm! I look forward to breeding the beautiful princess. I’ll breed her long, and I’ll breed her hard. It will be my solemn duty to breed her so thoroughly that I miss not a single egg in her clutch.”

If slimy insect monsters could blush, Calvin was pretty sure Ykuingi would be.

The chieftain burbled a bit of nervous laughter, then cleared her speaking tubes. “Ahem. jokes aside. We are very grateful for your gracious acceptance of our gifts. If you’ll allow me to change the subject, how long to you intend to stay before you move on, and where do you plan on going?”

“To the far south east and over the mountain range is another tribe of humans,” Calvin said pointing. “We plan on following the river, cutting a hole through the mountain and establishing a trade route connecting their people with my people.”

“Cut a hole through a mountain?” The chieftain asked, going still. Calvin wasn’t sure, but that body language was probably astonishment.

“Yeah, why?”

“N-Nothing,” The chieftan said, her many mouthpieces wriggling like a human’s fingers.

“We’ll stay for a week before we head upriver,” Calvin added, realizing he hadn’t given her a timeframe. “I’d like to avail myself of your hospitality while I finish replacing my barges with more sturdy ones and update some of my equipment.”

The chieftain scanned the hundreds of humans with thousands more waiting in the barges. “I don’t mean to be rude, but we couldn’t possibly…”

“We’ve got our own food and places to sleep,” Calvin said. “We mostly want the protection from Warped monsters that your borders offer.”

“Fair enough,” The chieftan said, bobbing. “Then if you’ll be departing in one week, we should arrange for your contract with Ykuingi to begin at that time. Of course you can speak to her before then.”

‘Ykuingi’ bobbed in acknowledgement.

“Is there anything else, before I return to explain our arrangements to my people?” the chieftain asked.

Calvin glanced around and spotted the canopy of trees that were obviously groomed to provide a walkway above the fish reservoirs.

“Yeah, what’s the closest place that your people would be comfortable with me cutting down a bunch of trees? An acre or two?”

***Calvin***

Calvin was overseeing the Knick-knacks as they constructed a new Flask to his specification. He couldn’t simply add new prefabs to an existing one, he had to create a new one from scratch, as they were literally baked into the cap on the bottom of the flask.

He was aiming to build a handy barging storage device, With things like iron nails, buckets, rope, hammers, planks of wood, and most especially, fully formed barges.

Calvin pictured the imagery on the bottom as a barge on the water with a hammer and saw above it. That would prevent any confusion.

What about a vial for mortally wounded men? Elliot asked. If you could scoop someone up and preserve them on the cusp of death, you could spit them back out when you reach someone like Matthis, who can stabilize the dying.

There’s a thought. Calvin thought, scanning the rapidly receding treeline as the knick-knacks cut and stacked a veritable wall of wood.

Calvin’s other summons were busily seasoning the wood with the dried ooze weaver mixture, scraping the resulting goop off into the river while still more were assembling the sturdier barges along with the prefabs he wanted in his new equipment flask.

He glanced back down at the raw nem that a knick-knack was massaging into shape while another kept a white hot flame moving around it with inhuman accuracy.

Most of the stones offered as ‘treasure’ had been shiny river rocks and a few garnets, but there was a single chunk of Nem that was about half a glimmer in size, the most valuable thing they’d given them, probably without even knowing it’s value.

It gave Calvin the option of expanding his Flask collection.

I guess I gotta bleed now, Calvin thought with a sigh, pulling out a knife and knicking his thumb, wincing as he dripped blood into a vial.

You’re Warped, Too

Already coming in handy, Calvin thought as he started the process of filtering out the ‘Blade Body’ mutation. Once that was done he would have to ‘uncode it’ with weak acids, remove the acid, infuse it into a Lure membrane and ‘bake’ it into the cap by sandwiching it between two hair-thin layers of Nem. It was going to take a couple days at least.

Glad I said we were going to take a week.

“So,” Baroke said, sidling up to him and throwing his oversized arm over Calvin’s shoulder. “Who’s this Ykuingi person? I noticed you refered to her as a ‘she’.”

“She wouldn’t happen to be the chief’s daughter would she?” Kala asked, sneaking up to his other side.

“She’s a diplomat. That’s it,” Calvin said, rolling his eyes.

“Right, right, but she is the chief’s daughter, right?” Baroke asked.

“Technically yes. She’s coming with us for a few months to learn about people, then we’re sending her back home. That’s it.”

“So…she’s technically the chief’s daughter,” Kala said with a knowing nod.

“You know what you must do.” Ella said, approaching from in front, finally boxing Calvin in.

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not really that imp-“

“You’ve got to kidnap her before we leave in a week,” Baroke said, jabbing Calvin in the side with his thick fingers. “Sweep that eight-legged lumpy snot-monster off her feet.”

“They’re called People,” Calvin said, enunciating the last word in Ooze-weaver language.

“Yeah, I can’t pronounce that.” Baroke shrugged.

“Anyway, every little point of Body counts. You told me you were at thirty-four?” Kala asked

“What of it?”

“That means all your physical and Hybrid skills are one point short of an eventual Ability.” Kala said. “Take the point while you can.”

“I only have like, one Skill gated by Body,” Calvin said, emphatically holding up a finger. “It’s not that big a deal!”

“You know how many people would kill to have a mutation that theoretically removes their Body cap?” Baroke demanded. “You’re just shitting all over the amazing opportunity you’ve got.”

“You’ve got literally unlimited potential,” Ella added. “Why pass up on it?”

Calvin took a deep breath. “Alright, fine, I’ll kidnap her and we’ll see if I get the point of Body. It’s gonna be tough doing it without drawing suspicion on the humans, though, and it’s absolutely critical I don’t blow relations between our people on a whim. Can I count on you guys to help?”

“Whachu talkin’ ‘bout?” Baroke said, taking his arm off Calvin’s shoulders. “It’s not my mutation.” He sauntered off with his hands in his pockets.

“I promised I’d help Learner with subtext this week,” Kala said apologetically, stepping away from him.

“Kala!” Learner called from the distance, waving. “I need you for an excuse!”

“And there she is now,” Kala said, daintily dashing away.

“Traitors!” Calvin shouted after them.

He glanced up at Ella.

The savage Genosian took one of the fish they’d been offered and bit its head off in one bite, swallowing without chewing.

“I’ll help if you want.” She said between bites of raw fish.

Calvin opened his mouth to take her up on it, then hesitated.

“Nah, it’s fine, I’ll do it by myself.

Ella didn’t do subterfuge well.