He turned and headed back to camp, mulling over the System’s name. Elliot was a person’s name, not a number or some kind of inhuman call-sign or anything. It was distinctly Malkenrovian in origin as well.

Like Calvin.

Cal set the pondering aside and headed back to the camp, behaving as similarly to the captain as he possibly could, given his limited experience with the man. It started to be a little fun, hooking his thumbs in his belt and acting like he knew what the hell he was doing. Everything else seemed to fall into place on its own as his second in command made sure everything ran smoothly.

When Cal finally got back to the captain’s tent, Ella was making herself some tea with the man’s teapot.

“What the hell are you doing? I black out and when I wake up, you’re making tea?” Cal said in Gadveran, putting his hands on his hips in a most captain-like way.

“I know it’s you, Calvin.” She said, glancing over at him. “But even though I know it’s you, if you try to get frisky while wearing that face, I will kick you in the balls.”

“Huh,” Cal sat down beside her and took the tea box out and sniffed it.

“How’d you know it was me?” Even his voice had changed to match Skovos. It shouldn’t be that easy.

“I can feel you at all times.”

“Huh,” Cal said, digesting that. “sounds weird.”

“It is.”

“I can’t feel you at all times.”

“The Guya affects everyone differently.” She said, looking away from him and shifting uncomfortably. Whatever track they were on, she obviously wasn’t comfortable enough to talk about it yet.

“Why tea?” Cal asked, changing the subject.

“I’ve heard about Gadverans drinking plant-water, and wondered what it would be like.” She said, pouring cold water filled with herbs into a cup.

“Well, you’re doing it wrong,” Cal said, taking the teapot away from her. He lit a small stick from the lamp and started the fuel in the teapot’s burner, then poured the contents into the filter, catching the herbs and refilling the teapot.

They sat in silence, waiting for the water to boil.

Once the tea was done, Cal poured them both a cup and waited for it to cool down.

“Bleh,” Ella said, grimacing as she drank it. “I don’t know what I was thinking, this stuff is foul.

“Eh, it’s an acquired taste, I guess.” Cal finished the rest of the tea, smacking his lips and yawning. A nice warm belly made him tired, and the tea she’d chosen wasn’t the morning kind, so Cal found himself desperate for sleep.

“Captain Skovos, the boy’s escaped!” The second-in-command said, sticking his head in the tent where Cal was dozing across the tent from Ella. He’d wanted to sleep in her lap, but she’d kicked him away. Cal had forgotten he was wearing someone else’s face.

“Mmm, what?” he said, opening his eyes.

“The boy in the cage, he’s escaped in the confusion.”

“Well, he’s not going to get very far alone at night in the jungle. How’s the kid that got stung?”

“He’s recovering well, sir, the swelling went down almost immediately after the wasp disappeared.”

“Good, good…” Cal searched his memories for the guy’s name. “Farren, How long have we been working together?”

“About two weeks, sir?”

Oh, excellent, he doesn’t know the original captain very well.

“And in that time, have I ever explained myself to you?”

“Umm, from time to time. I am your second.”

“I see, I see…Farren, we’re going back to Surrak.”

“What? But sir, that’s…dereliction of duty.”

“I know what my duty is!” Cal raised his voice, just high enough to startle the second-in-command. “It’s to the crown, not fighting barbarians in the middle of the jungle! Miss Ella here has valuable information that will swing the war with Iletha in our favor. Do you believe that is less important than tracking down sawtoothed apes running around the forest in butt-flaps?”

“No sir.” Farren said, balking at Cal’s stare.

“Tomorrow, have the Sergeants advance their squad’s Skills at their discretion, but if I hear about anyone giving a recruit a useless Skill maliciously, they’ll have words with me. Once everyone is past their Forming Day, pack us up and head to the road to the West, the one that stretches along the coast between Surrak and Mujenan. Once we hit it, we’ll follow the road to the north and deliver her to the Hash’maje.”

“I…Didn’t know you spoke Genosian,” Farren said.

“You don’t know me at all, now ‘git.”

“Very leaderly.” Ella said, nodding as Farren rushed off to make the arrangements.

“I don’t know a damn thing about being a leader. It feels like some invisible thing I can’t grasp, but everyone else seems to understand it intuitively. Even when I was a kid.”

“Was a kid?” Ella asked with a raised brow.

Cal slapped a hand on his thigh and snapped his fingers

“My intuition is terrible!”

“And?”

“I don’t know what the technical term is for it, but-“

High functioning autism.

“But my Intuition has been crap since I got the System, and probably before, I think. The Skills the man gave me were just patches to deal with the symptoms of having poor Intuition.”

“The man?”

“Uncle Bekvah.” Cal said as if that explained everything.

“I see.”

“By the way, sir.” Farren said, sticking his head back in the tent.

“Are you normally this intrusive?” Cal asked, glancing up in frustration.

“Yessir. Should I put the captive back in the cage for the night now?”

“Obviously not.” Cal said. “There’s already one person who broke out of those flimsy cages prowling around, why would I want to put her where he could snag her in the middle of the night? She’s safest here with me.”

“But…”

“She’s well trained, and totally docile.” Cal said, patting Ella on the head as she scowled at him. “I think I’ll take a page from the boy’s book and keep her.”

“Ummm…okay then.” Farren ducked back out of the tent and the two of them laid down to sleep.

A minute turned into ten, then thirty, and despite being exhausted, Cal wasn’t able to find the sweet release of sleep.

“Ugh,” Cal said, trying to find a comfortable position on the captain’s sheepskin covered cot.

“What is it?” she asked, propping herself up to look at him.

“My damn stomach’s too big to lay on, and when I lay on my back, I snore so loud that it wakes me up.”

Ella burst out laughing, quickly stifling herself because of the thin walls and turning over. He could see her shoulders continue to shake as she quietly giggled to herself.

“That must be terrible,” she said between chuckles.

Cal turned over to his other side, grumbling for a while before he found a position that was comfortable, a sheepskin stuffed between his arms.

“To the hells with getting old,” Cal said moments before he fell asleep.

The next morning went by without a hitch.

Although his disguise made him look old, he was not, in fact, old. The discomfort of the night before had simply been a result of his new body shape.

Cal got dressed and prowled around the camp, looking Captain-y in an effort to familiarize himself with the soldier’s names, and how military discipline worked. His salute was supposedly terrible, so he’d carefully watched the sergeants and his second address each other, carefully cataloguing the differences between a superior and subordinate.

One mistake could breed suspicion. Luckily Cal knew that no one suspected him of being a teenage boy masquerading as their CO. When they looked at him, he felt a healthy dose of fear, respect, and a tiny undercurrent of disdain for his womanizing ways.

At Ella’s insistence, he’d had her put back in the cage before they started moving, because, according to her, it would be far less suspicious. Also, she didn’t want to associate that man’s face with Cal at all, so she’d rather avoid him if possible until they were free of the Gadveran military.

The Gadveran military had a very interesting system for dealing with Breaks mid-campaign, Cal realized as he toured the campground. In order to become a Sergeant, a man had to have at least three Breaks, five years experience, and have earned the Teaching skill

When the recruits gained their first, second, or third Breaks, they would become the communal property of the camp’s Sergeants, who would break the recruits into groups, where some Sergeants were responsible for teaching their most appropriate Skill to anyone who needed it, and others would harry the slower, fatter, or weaker recruits into shape.

In a single day, the skill, discipline and cohesion of a company could experience a substantial increase.

Assuming the sergeants were doing their jobs correctly.

Cal had no basis for comparison, so he simply walked around the camp, scowling disapprovingly while he learned, which seemed to put the fear of Skovos into them. Leadership seemed to be the art of allowing people to think you were better than you were, and then never disabusing them of that notion.

Weird stuff.

By midday, the sergeants had successfully guided the last of the younger men through their Forming Day, making sure their attributes were regulation.

Cal was surprised to discover that there were guidelines in the Gadveran military about where exactly each attribute should be at each stage of a soldier’s career.

First Break Body should be seven, second Break should be eight, third should be ten, and so on. Mind was only required to be raised to five in the case of the severely handicapped.

The amount of Warp available each break was roughly determined by a person’s highest primary attribute, multiplied by one and a third, which was why Bekvah knew exactly how much Warp he should have during his first Break, half again more than other people.

Farren had everyone pack up and head West while Cal looked on stoically. He felt some confusion and uncertainty in the glances sent his way, but when he puffed out his barrel chest and acted like he knew what he was doing, the gazes became reassured and they simply went back to what they were doing.

Leadership is weird. I don’t really get it. Once they were in town, Cal would let Ella out and the two of them would vanish, because standing around and pretending he knew what was going on was making his stomach sour.

The next day was uneventful, with Cal riding beside Ella and chatting until they settled down for the night. Farren was a little surprised when Cal ate the same meals as everyone else, but Cal didn’t feel anything bad from the other soldier’s gazes when he did so. They seemed to think better of him for it.

He made sure to stop and chat with each of the recruits, trying to memorize their names. Wasn’t that what captains were supposed to do?

Whenever he felt a soldier who was looking at him with particularly high repressed anger, Cal would take them aside and get to the bottom of it, usually sorting out some error that had been made in his name, or mediating differences between bunkmates.

The third day travelling to the west, they came across the road and turned to the northeast. All they had to do now was march in relative safety on the well-worn roads.

Midday of the fourth day, they were trudging around a gentle turn in the road when Cal spotted a half-burnt carriage in an open field above the rocky shore, surrounded by men wearing the blue and black of Iletha.

The carriage had a distinctive emblem on it, but Cal didn’t know one noble house from another, being a consummate hick.

“Farren, my eyes aren’t what they used to be. Whose carriage is that?” he said, pointing the half-destroyed construction out. Farren glanced over, and his eyes went very wide.

“By all the gods, that’s the Hash’Maje’s symbol!”

“C’mon!” Cal shouted before rushing forward, jumping off the road and sprinting through the waist-high grass, leaving his stunned company behind. He supposed he should say something more eloquent or leader-y, but he couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound forced, or way to slow.

National pride wasn’t really the issue here, nor civic duty. He simply owed the family a debt, and he was halfway across the field before he even considered the full ramifications of the situation he was in.

The forty or so Ilethan soldiers were deep, deep behind enemy lines. There was no way that they were anything less than Veterans – or better – on a mission specifically to capture the leadership of Gadvera, which meant Cal had a very slim chance of making any kind of meaningful difference with the second and third Break people at his disposal, and would most likely be put down in a matter of seconds.

Cal glanced behind him, and spotted the rest of the company with their swords out, waving them above their heads as they sprinted along, following him blindly towards certain death.

Wonderful.

Cal hauled back and tossed the Fire-Worm extract with everything he had, causing it to trace a long arc through the air. He duplicated a hundred pounds of the stuff directly on top of the Ilethans ahead of them.

Mass splitting.

8/11 Bent remaining.

The duplicated gunk was black and smouldered faintly, not like the glear gel he’d had earlier. Rather than burn them alive, it spattered down on them, causing confusion and light burns.

It oxidized. It’s been five days. What did you expect?

I don’t know what that means! Cal thought, furiously trying to come up with a different solution to their Ilethan problem now that they were aware of their presence.

Ooh, you think?

The foreign thoughts in his head second-guessed him as he whipped out his flint and steel, slowing to take aim. The rest of the company continued their charge, splitting around him.

One of the Ilethans, wearing thick bands of nem and a blue silk robe that marked him as a sorcerer, raised his hand and shouted a single word, causing the front wave of Gadveran soldiers to tumble forward in sleep.

Cal felt like he’d just worked a full day, drank a glass of warm milk, and Karen was rocking him to sleep. And something was swimming around his head and tickling the back of his throat with sleepiness.

“Weak Willed Gadverans!” the sorcerer shouted with glee as the entire company collapsed, save Calvin.

That’s not good, Cal thought, the realization of impending death snapping him out of his stupor. He had really hoped for some meat shields, at the very least.

Cal shoved the sensation flitting around his head in his mouth and chewed it, then swallowed it. He wasn’t sure if that was something he was supposed to be able to do, but it seemed to stave off the desire for sleep, and caused a tic in the sorcerer’s eye.

Cal struck some sparks a hundred feet away from the frowning sorcerer.

Shaping.

8/11 Bent remaining.

Cal missed the spark, accidentally duplicating air to little effect.

The sorcerer raised his hand again, shaking his head and chuckling while blue fire coalescing around his fingers.

Seems like a good time to retreat, if you ask me.

I wouldn’t make it halfway to the road. Nut up or shut up. Cal thought, striking the steel again.

That’s a very Karen thing to say.

Shaping.

7/11 Bent remaining.

Rather than create a field of fire, Cal used shaping to channel all the mass he could into a single white hot spark of iron, one hundred and twenty-one pounds of liquid steel, aimed straight at the sorcerer’s chest.

The sorcerer was tossed violently backward, instantly immolated by the molten steel.

The handful of weapon-wielding ilethans that weren’t busy fighting the royal guards peeled away and charged Cal, while the Royal guard members seemed to snap out of some kind of stupor with the death of the sorcerer, their blades speeding up and making the Ilethans bleed.

The royal guards were Legends, moving like streaks of light and striking like thunder, while the Ilethans were trying to overwhelm them with the sheer number of Veterans.

Calvin ran away as fast as he could. Better to lead these men on a merry chase than stand still and be slaughtered. He was pulling his weight simply by allowing the half-dozen remaining royal guards a chance to catch their breath.

Calvinian summoning.

6/11 Bent remaining.

Calvinian Summoning has reached level 2!

Calvinian Summoning level 2: 20 pound limit, 4 minutes. 0 slots available.

Hmm…

Calvinian summoning.

Calvinian summoning.

4/11 Bent remaining.

Calvinian Summoning has reached level 3!

Calvinian Summoning level 3: 45 pound limit, 9 minutes. 0 slots available.

Calvinian Summoning.

Calvinian Summoning

2/11 bent remaining.

In a matter of seconds, Cal created thirty-six five-pound Fever wasps, filling the air with their dreadful humming.

Kill them while I run away – ack!

Cal spotted a glint of light as one of the Ilethan Veterans waved his sword lazily, and he ducked on instinct, remembering Jinnei’s Sword Skill Ability.

The wasp at Cal’s head-level split in half.

Thirty-five giant wasps left.

Spread out and kill them.

Cal mentally nudged them, and the wasps went for it while Cal tried his best to stay out of range of the fighters who seemed to run a lot faster than him.

A few of them taken by surprise by the wasps, but most of the swordsmen were fast enough to slash the wasps out of the sky, sending their green ooze splattering to the ground. In a matter of seconds, his wasps were dead.

Stupid! They were just a bigger target!

Maybe giant wasps wasn’t the way to go here.

Cal did a 180. He’d gotten about a quarter of the dozen or so Ilethans chasing him, and from what he could see, the Royal Guard were pressing the rest of foreigners back now that they were free of the sorcerer’s influence. He only needed to buy time for the situation to reverse. Sometimes that involved going an unexpected direction.

Calvinian Summoning.

Calvin summoned thousands upon thousands of normal sized wasps, and instructed them to cloud the air around him, blocking off sight and stinging anything that tried to get close as he charged madly toward the Ilethans.

Cal saw one brace his feet on the grassy surface of the plain, and he let the strength go out of his legs, pitching himself backward just in time to miss the Charge ability that sent the ilethan streaking through the air above him. Cal then rolled to the side as quickly as he could, and the grass beside him split as invisible slashes tore through it.

When he got close he dropped low and knuckle-ran through the crowd of Ilethans, scrambling, ducking and dodging as fast as his adrenalin soaked body could take him.

The ilethans, for their part, were incredibly distracted by being stung, and their performance suffered significantly, making them sloppy enough for Cal to squeeze through them and leverage half the swarm against the other Ilethans.

The distraction of painful venomous stingers to the eyes was the last straw, and the titanic struggle between the royal Guard and the Ilethans was over in a fraction of a second. They then rushed past Cal, angling to mop up the rest of them.

Panting, Cal glanced over his shoulder, and noticed the Ilethans behind him were all being run down by the Royal Guard, their movements hampered by Fever Wasp poison.

“Who, or what, are you?” came a stern voice as sharp as a blade.

A steel-haired woman was eyeing him suspiciously, hand resting on the pommel of her sword. “I’ve never seen magic like that.”

“Just dupdomancy,” Cal said. “Captain Skovos, Nice to meet you.”

“You are not Captain Skovos.” She said, narrowing her eyes. “I know captain Skovos, and more importantly, he knows me. You are not him.”

Damn, that was a short ride. Cal thought as he smiled nervously.

A sudden shriek split the air and drew their attention to where Kala had fallen on her butt, staring at him in horror. A moment later, she blushed, cleared her throat and stood, wiping the dirt and grass off her butt and giving him an elegant curtsey.

“Calvin, it’s nice to see you again.”

…I think your other girlfriend can see me.