Calvin leapt over the side of the wall, and noticed the entire army of One flicker. Like a single twitching organism, every sprinting giant reoriented themselves on Calvin. Causing the entire mass of flesh to shift in a strange way he’d never seen from a human army.

Singularity of purpose.

The individual giants were nine feet tall each, and imposing, charging straight for Calvin with maddened eyes.

Range of Beli Ma is above ten feet, so this shouldn’t be too hard, Calvin thought, holding up his left hand and allowing one of his knives to slide out of his right palm. If they had giant-sized halberds or something he might have a little more trouble, but it would be a simple thing to lop off their heads before they made it to him.

Calvin was getting ready to receive the first giant when it leapt aside suddenly, revealing an empty column through One’s army.

Shooting straight down that column, was a beam of crackling purple energy, already in Calvin’s face.

Calvin’s arm twitched reflexively, diverting the purple beam aside. His entire left side became pins and needles, his leg collapsing out from under him.

Sensing weakness, the nearest giant dove for Calvin’s face, jaw opened wide enough to fit his entire head if it were so inclined.

I guess I’ll never know for sure, Calvin thought, swinging his good arm and beheading the monster some ten feet away, it’s corpse landing right at his feet, head tumbling past and bumping up against Calvin’s wall.

To his right, Ella was having a grand time. The Genosian leapt into the air, taking advantage of the monster’s singleminded attention to Calvin to mount their heads and crush their skulls with her bludgeoning instrument.

We can’t keep this up very long, Calvin thought, making a swift stroke in a full circle around himself, killing no less than eight giants, which toppled forward, filling the ground with more difficult terrain.

It won’t take too many more of these before I’m buried, Calvin thought, taking another swing and adding to the growing pile around him.

Ella is fine, Calvin thought, glancing at the blood-drenched savage leaping from shoulder to shoulder, clubbing the giants like fish.

He glanced up into the sky, taking another stroke with his extended blade and piling the bodies higher. Above him were hundreds of circling airborne creatures. They were about three feet long, with four wings, razor sharp talons and a bad attitude.

They might be able to dodge his knife.

That doesn’t seem too bad, once I’m in the air, the brain crabs can’t get to me, Calvin thought. He was about to rise up into the air, when he spotted something in the air that gave him second thoughts. There was a faint glimmer of bent light, a slightly deformed image, then it was gone.

He’s trying to make me go to the air, Calvin thought taking another swing as the giants started crawling over the pile, adding their bodies to the mound.

Calvin tried to put weight on his left leg, but the stubborn limb wasn’t having it.

Isn’t this actually a bad situation?

Calvin considered the third option as the pile around him grew taller than he was, beginning to block out the light, and yet more giants were single-mindedly charging.

Drown in our blood.

Calvin’s hackles rose as that thought began rattling around in his head, a foreign sensation creeping into his head as One’s thoughts began intruding on his own. To make matters wors, he was actually kneeling in a couple inches of blood, and the sight of the sky was getting dimmer and dimmer as the bodies piled up.

Well, if the sky isn’t an option, then we go under, Calvin thought, directing his attention down. But burrowing is slow and they’d be on me before I even emerged out the other side. How can I speed that up?

In a moment of inspiration, Calvin imagined a water in a straw, and how it related to air pressure.

No, you’re not actually sucking the water up. What you’re doing is creating an area of low pressure in your mouth. A vacuum, if you will. Now the planet likes pressure to be equal, so when that low pressure zone appears in your mouth, the outside atmosphere tries to correct that by the most efficient means possible. In this case it does it by pushing water up through the straw and into your mouth.

Finally, one of Elliot’s rants comes in handy, Calvin thought, taking one more swing, mulching already dead bodies and new assailants crawling between them before putting his attention on the ground.

Kill any nearby brain crabs, do whatever you have to, Calvin instructed Kurawe.

The cultist didn’t respond, but Calvin heard the whizzing of rocks speeding through the air at supersonic speeds.

Mayfly’s body

Trait Doctoring.

Shifting.

Multi-Shaping.

15/54 Bent remaining

Calvin made himself light, slowing his perception of time. He mentally selected a tube of earth between him and about thirty feet back, changing the viscosity of the ground to that of air, then redistributed all of its mass into the ground around it.

A split second later, he used multi-shaping to create a vacuum at the other end of the tube, sealing the vacuum with a large box of Abyssal steel.

Suddenly, Calvin was standing at the very bottom of a straw.

The world itself slammed him into the earthen tube with a vengeance. Calvin barely had time to forcibly tuck in his tingling leg before it got torn off by the force of the atmosphere.

The tube didn’t particularly care what direction Calvin was facing, tossing him around violently as it drew him down and to the side at break-neck speeds.

There was a sudden tug in Calvin’s side as he jerked to a halt, air rushing past him like a typhoon. A fraction of a second later Calvin opened his eyes to see that he was currently in the grip of some kind of worm, gradually pulling more of Calvin’s body into it’s maw with a disgusting pulsating motion that caused it’s teeth to open and shut rhythmically, drawing him in.

Looks like One had this direction covered too, Calvin thought with a grimace. His right arm was pinned against his side by the creature’s maw, and his left hand dangled uselessly, still trying to regain sensation. Purple blood oozed from the creature’s lips.

Calvin manifested a knife in his mouth, ignoring the strange sensation of cold steel emerging from his tongue and slipping past his lips. Knife clenched between his teeth, he jerked his head to the right as hard as he could, praying that the invisible extention of Beli Ma would still work.

The invisible blade bit into the worm’s neck, severing the creature’s head in one stroke, causing Calvin to tumble down into the darkness below, accompanied by the pale worm’s colorless ichor as it flopped over him.

Calvin landed on his side and peeled the giant worm head off of him, shuddering as the teeth were still reflexively convulsing, trying to pull him into a gullet that no longer existed.

“Gah,” Calvin pried and shoved, forcing the head away from himself as he regained his feet, using mostly his right arm and right leg. The left one still flopped nigh uselessly under him.

As a precaution, Calvin dismissed the large vacuum, shifting and the Trait Doctoring, not eager to have another fit of seizures.

Dirt that had been too light to fall until now rained down on Calvin, prompting him to look up.

Above him, he saw where his escape tunnel had crossed paths with this underground tunnel.

Next time I try this trick, I’m lining the tunnel itself, Calvin thought, brushing dirt off his shoulders.

Kurawe, I’m starting to get close to empty. If you would, please.

Yes, Ravager.

The Bent started rolling in, ticking him back up to thirty in a matter of seconds.

Let me know when you’ve only got a dozen or so left to take. Calvin thought

Yes, Ravager.

Let’s see… Calvin glanced around the darkness, his ears picking up the hungry cries of monsters approaching from further down the house-sized tunnel.

It gave him a strange sense of nostalgia. Calvin always liked to pretend he was the hunter in the dark when he was younger, stalking the other children in the village through the black of night. He even went so far as to drool on purpose, making himself that much closer to the apex predator of the night that he imagined.

It was a silly time in his life, but now…

Now he could make it a reality.

Calvin’s right arm and leg had multiple puncture wounds from where the worm had snatched him out of the air, and his left side was still temporarily out of commission. Calvin was not in good shape to continue fighting, after only about ninety seconds of battle.

Obviously the smart thing to do would be to cut a hole back up to the surface, give himself a body capable of going faster than sound, and high-tailing it out of there, gain some distance and reengage on better terms.

That would be the smart thing to do. Unfortunately, the smart thing to do was often the most predictable.

Calvin felt like spitting in this creature’s face.

Heart of the Swarm

Atom Ant

9/54 Bent remaining.

Calvin poured all his Bent except for the nine ghost hands orbiting around him, into the spell, creating hundreds of stalkers with the strength to crush steel like softened butter.

The dark tunnel sprang into stark relief as Calvin’s natural night vision was subsumed by that of three hundred stalkers packed shoulder to shoulder.

Hunt. Calvin gave all the stalkers a single objective: Do what they do best in the dark.

Calvin could feel that distinct twinge in their guts as the organ controlling their aura of apathy engaged, creating fields that overlapped and reinforced each other, expanding outward as they spread in every direction. Stalkers were not comfortable in large groups, and Calvin had to temper their impulse to fight as they spread out to a more comfortable distance from each other.

The sounds coming from down the massive tunnel resolved into screaming and individual footsteps as the enemies became visible down the tunnel.

Thousands of insectile creatures skittered to a halt as they came into the area of effect.

The enemy paused, rushed forward, then paused, then rushed forward again, only to lose their concentration for a third time. They were a bit more reactive than Calvin had hoped, able to somewhat track the Stalkers with their gaze, but they were definitely feeling the disjointed attention span brought on by the Apathy Aura.

Calvin cracked an internal smile as he imagined One tearing his hair out and howling for his minions to stay on task. The hive mind was obviously stepping in and redirecting them every time they lost track of the Stalkers.

Still, having someone over their shoulder shouting in their ear wasn’t enough to save these simpleminded creatures.

They lacked the intelligence and drive to protect themselves when their mission was forgotten. One’s creatures might be dangerous in droves, but individually, they had poor survival instincts.

And Calvin’s Stalkers were extra potent.

This should be fun.

***Learner***

“And here we are,” Learner said, wiping imaginary sweat from her brow as she got the two anesthetized giants off the battlefield and up onto the side of the hill. From here, she had a commanding view of the force tearing through Calvin’s makeshift wall, scattering wood fragments everywhere and forcing the lanky rock-throwers to retreat.

Learner had a pang of worry for Calvin, but reassured her brain that the Manifold Predator was certainly capable of handling himself in this situation, directing her brain instead to focus on the vivisection.

She bent down, her body crackling as it shifted back into her usual form. She made one finger into a long blade and drew it down the creature’s chest, popping through the bone and peeling the creature open from chest to navel.

Learner gave a squee of excitement as she saw the wealth of information embedded in the creature’s body.

The shape of the bubbles in the bones, the lining of the creature’s organs, the Bent-assisted regeneration causing the wound to slowly close, each and every decision about this creatures shape was made to maximize performance at the lowest cost, biologically speaking.

The bones weren’t the strongest she could possibly make, but their density to strength was outstanding! The lungs were especially interesting, as they had an unidirectional airflow, making them several times more efficient than a human’s at a fraction of the cost.

I always wondered why humans use such inefficient lungs. Learner thought to herself, lifting the lungs out of the way and checking out the heart.

They don’t have a choice, mom. Learner’s brain thought, carrying a feeling of…exasperation.

Learner wasn’t even a fraction of the way done with her first vivisection when a swarm of dark dots boiled out of the place she’d last seen Calvin.

Every one of them was a Stalker, a mid-level predator from the other side of the Siphon. In Learner’s home, where distance didn’t exist, these things were hunters that made a small, numb hole in your consciousness and drilled into your center, eating your existence out from the inside before adding it to their own.

In this world their attack pattern was largely similar, and they mastered distance rather quickly.

Interesting to see what forms my bretheren take when they land in a world with three dimensions.

Mom, please stop thinking about the other side, Learner thought with a wince. Her human brain was barely capable of conceptualizing a universe where everything was composed of thought and raw potential.

About a hundred of the Stalkers leapt out into the tide of flesh and began picking off their prey at speeds that were difficult to capture with a normal human’s eye.

Learner made her eyes a bit bigger, and watched as the Stalkers swept through the enemy numbers.

Every once in a while, one of them would be caught in the dispelling effect of a brain crab, but the majority of the stalkers slid through the army unhindered, tearing their enemy to pieces and occasionally splitting in two like a dividing cell, keeping their numbers from dropping too precipitously.

This ‘One’ person Kala and Calvin had spoken of, he changed his tactics. The brain crabs drew into tight quarters behind tough shields, working together to make an area of denial that the Stalkers simply couldn’t penetrate without being turned back into green smoke.

It was about then that the wasps chewing through the trees behind the wall decided to take off.

The wasps flew straight up into the air until they vanished from sight, too small to even perceive.

A tense stalemate lasted for only a couple minutes before the tight formations of brain crabs began to explode, subjected to crystalline spheres that exploded violently on contact, scattering crystal shrapnel and an inordinate amount of flaming liquid.

These spheres dropped out of the clear sky, about the size of a man’s head, but the amount of fire that came out of them suggested they took advantage of undifferentiated matter to pack extra bang in each one.

A cloud of tiny fliers burst out of the black forest, intent on hunting down the wasps bombing them from above.

“Grrrur?” one of the anesthetized giants groaned, peering at Learner through thick, scaly eyelids.

“Hush now,” Learner said sweetly, poking a finger into the creature’s neck and injecting it with more paralytic. “I need to take a look at your brain.”