***Kala***

“So the Guya, when used properly,” Ella said, motioning with her hands. “Establishes a very strong, very stable bond, with an uenha, and a Poeor.”

Kala glanced up at the translator, who shrugged. It seemed like the words went over his head too. She looked back down at the pink aura flickering out of her body, looking like a flame that pointed in the direction of Calvin. It was like the Genosian girl was a Calvin Compass.

Ella wasn’t really looking at where she was going, either, but every turn brought them closer to Cal.

“The Poeor wants what is best for the Uenha, and the Uenha wants what the Poeor wants. It varies a bit between individuals. This is actually a better bond then both wanting the best for each other, or wanting what the other wants, as they can lead to cross-purposes or strange emotional paradoxes. We discovered this through much experimentation with the Guya in different amounts and mixtures.”

“So which one are you?” Kala asked, curious.

Ella blushed and glanced away. The tall Genosian’s embarrassment was a lot cuter than Kala had thought possible.

“The Uenha,” She muttered quietly.

“Is that bad?”

“No, it’s not a bad thing, it’s just…” She raised her hands in fists before relaxing them by her side again with a sigh. “Not the role I expected to take. I’ve always been the one with stronger Will.”

“Does that mean you have to do what he tells you?” Kala asked.

Slave magic existed in Gadvera, but it was for the most part crude pain or suffocation inducing enchantments that owners used to condition their property. Kala had never heard of anything as subtle as what Ella spoke of.

“Not even a little bit,” Ella said. “But I want to, as long as he wants me to.”

Ella glanced down at Kala in a way that reminded her of a hungry animal, sending a shiver of fear down her spine. Fear and the tiniest tingle of lust.

“I want everything he wants.”

“Is that so?” Kala said, returning her attention to the crowded street in front of them. Let’s not overthink this. She’s probably talking about something else. Not me. That would be… Unbidden, the idea of being encapsulated between Ella’s soft body, and Calvin’s lean muscle came to mind, and the tingle of lust redoubled.

For the briefest instant, she could imagine herself burying her face in between those soft mounds, reveling in the Genosian’s silky skin while Calvin got behind her, using her distraction to –

“Hey look at that!” Kala shouted to distract herself from her un-princess-like thoughts. “Fried Gardor bits!” She pointed at the food stall on the side of the road, where the vendor hawked his product to passerby. Gardor was a large land predator that was a bit gamey, but good chopped into smaller bits, heavily seasoned and put on a stick.

“They smell good.” Ella said as they walked toward them. She stopped a few feet away and considered for a moment, seemingly consulting something.

“Let’s get some extra, Calvin is hungry.” Ella said, nodding.

She can tell that? Kala might have dismissed the Bond talk as the words of a savage so neck-deep in her ritual culture that she couldn’t see beyond it, but…

Seer has reached level 5!

Seer level 5: See the truth of the soul.

+1 Intuition

Please choose an ability from the list of compatible ones –

Kala took a deep breath and forced the messages away, like she’d been trained. As a princess, it had been drilled into her to put the utmost consideration into her Ability choices. Definitely not something she should do on the side of a busy street, walking with her crush’s beautiful…slave…thing?

Honestly the dynamic of their relationship was causing her more than a little stress, and she had far too much on her mind to make a calm decision now, so she put it off for when she could get her uncle’s advice.

“Sounds good,” Kala said in response to Ella’s suggestion, and Trevor fished some small copper dust coins out of his bag and gave them to her. The smell of the heavily seasoned meat was started to affect Kala now, and by the time she got to the front of the line with Ella, she was starving.

When she got to the front, the vendor took one look at Kala’s silk clothes, then his gaze flickered over to the towering Genosian barbarian, who smiled at him with her sharp teeth.

“What can I get for you, mistress?” he said, smiling and bowing deferentially. Kala was well known, but not that well known. A vendor on the street wouldn’t know her right away. The man was merely bowing to her clothes.

“A dozen skewers.” She said.

“Five dust, please,”

It was a bit more than she expected, but well within their price range. She dropped the copper pieces on the table, and the man swiftly handed the skewers to Ella, who began eating them immediately.

“Ahh,” The vendor paled as the person he’d assumed was a slave began eating her mistress’s food. Kala enjoyed the confusion for a moment, before she ceded to her responsibility to her people.

“They’re for her.” She said with a practiced, gentle, princess-like nod.

“I see, yes, that makes sense.” The vendor nodded, and returned to his business as they left.

“Pass me one of those,” Kala said once they were back in the street, and the Genosian handed one of the greasy sticks over without complaint, currently working her way through the meat at a prodigious rate with those sharp teeth.

“I’ll never get tired of how many spices you lowlanders use,” Ella said, smacking her lips between shearing off pieces of tough meat with ease. It was impressive, but it didn’t distract Kala from a question that had burning in her mind for a while now.

“Have you told Calvin all this, about the Uenha and Poeor?”

“Not exactly, no.” Ella said, her expression a bit guarded.

“Why?”

“A few years before she died, my mother told me to never let a man know exactly how much sway he has over you. She always had my father picking up shells, so I figured she probably knew what she was doing.”

“Picking up shells?”

“Obeying her every whim?” Ella responded.

“You mean wrapped around her finger?”

“Why would she wrap him around her finger? How would that even work? He’d have to be tiny, and malleable, like some kind of plaything…Ooohhh.”

Kala giggled as the Genosian stared into the distance, her jaw slack as she pondered the idiom, the biggest stumbling block of learning a new language.

“This gives me an idea,” Kala said after daintily chewing and swallowing her third princess-sized bite. Ella was on her fourth skewer. Kala watched the girl devour her meal enviously. Even if Kala tried, over a decade of conditioning made it literally difficult to chew more than a little at a time.

“Yes?”

“You say there’s a bond, and that Calvin’s affected, but how do we test that?”

Ella didn’t know that Kala could see the bond. Matter of fact, nobody knew she could see it, and Kala didn’t intend to tell anyone about it, either. If she did, it felt like she would be admitting that Ella had the advantage, somehow. Or maybe Calvin had the advantage?

Kala was very confused.

Still, that didn’t stop Kala’s urge to spawn some un-princess-like mischief using the bond.

“Here’s how we test it…”

***Calvin***

“backs straight, fists above the heart!” Lance shouted as they drilled their salutes for the umpteenth time today. The sun was already starting to go down, and Cal’s shoulders were burning as he tried to hold the weighted wristband above his heart.

This seems cruel and unusual. Cal thought. Nobody else got weighted wristbands.

Nobody else disrespected the Hash’Maje.

Lance looked over them one more time, eyeing Calvin critically before finally nodding. He could give them a hard time for a couple hours but it would be counter-productive to take an entire group of recruits and stunt their training.

“Alright, put your hand’s down you’re done.”

The recruits heaved a collective sigh of relief as they relaxed their postures.

“Done with learning your salute!” Lance shouted. “break off into your practice groups by Skill! Recruits with Swordfighting over there! Recruits with Archery there! Stealth Skills over there with Scoutmaster Felix!”

They stood there stunned a moment, fully expecting to go to bed after this was over and done.

“I didn’t think I needed to remind you, but there is a war out there, recruits, and in a day, maybe two, it’s going to be on our doorsteps. You are not being trained for some vague maybe-war. You’re being trained for the day after tomorrow, when you’ll be called on to defend the city wall. Get the lead out of your asses!”

The recruits jumped to obey, and Cal headed toward Scoutmaster Felix, an older Gadveran man with leather-like skin and a dark brown cloak. He seemed like he could blend into the background, despite his distinctive features.

Well, I do have Stealth, so I better go over there.

“Hold on,” Lance said, grabbing Cal by the back of shirt collar.

“Ack, what?”

“You’re a special case. If what I saw was anything to go by, Andra’s going to be using you as a trump card. My guess is, both you and her are gonna want you to live through more than one such event, and that’s why, on behalf of the General, I’m going to put you through The Gauntlet.

“The what?”

“What are your defensive Skills?” Lance asked, ignoring him. “We’ve got to squeeze as much improvement out of them as we can before you get put out on the front lines.”

“Umm….”

Calvin didn’t exactly have defensive skills. Third Eye and Feel intent synergized to create something that could be misconstrued as one, but he didn’t actually have any.

“Armored? Dodge?”

Cal shook his head.

“Shield-work? Toughness? Meat-shield?”

Cal shook his head.

“I don’t have any.”

“Damn,” Lance said, scratching the back of his head before clapping Cal on the shoulder.

He felt Lance’s gaze land on his stomach, filled with the intent to strike him.

Sure enough, Lance’s other fist swept forward, aiming to catch Cal in the stomach. Cal stepped out of the way, wrenching his shoulder out of the man’s grip and allowing the burly fist to sweep through the air.

“Well, you’ve got something.” Lance said, raising a brow. “You didn’t lie to me about having the Dodge Skill, didja?”

“It’s not a defensive skill.” Cal responded, on guard now as the master of the Yard returned to his previous calm, thoughtful stance.

“Well, it’ll do. I don’t know how you survived as long as you have, but there’s some people out there that can kill someone in an instant from distances that beggar belief. Those kind of people are always held back, on the lookout for your kind of people.”

Lance straightened Cal’s uniform where it’d been disheveled from dodging.

“My kind of people?”

“The squishy kind that can kill a lot of people at once with a single Ability.”

“Ah.”

“So we’re gonna beat some defense into you. I’ve been told you were raised by a Malkenrovian Frontliner. That’s a good start, but now we’re going to teach you how to live past the first dramatic demonstration of your power.”

“Why do I get the feeling this is going to be humiliating?” Cal asked as Lance’s grin slowly widened.

****

“hit the ground harder and roll with a spring, not a flop!” Lance shouted, but Cal could barely hear anything over the muffling of the safety mask and his own heartbeat.

He was crouched behind some haybales meant to simulate a palisade, trying to throw colored balls – simulating spells – at bottles – simulating troops – in front of him while half a dozen grinning Gadveran archers were simulating Ilethan snipers by shooting at his head every time he peered over to take a shot.

“Begin!” Cal leapt up and reoriented on the target, feeling the waiting archers catch sight of him, throwing the ball as quickly as he could. He missed.

Damn.

When he felt one of the archers’ gaze experience the spike of surety that preceded a shot, Cal slammed himself down to the ground, rolling away with a push, bouncing off the hardpacked dirt and further away. Four blunted practice arrows hit the bale behind him as Cal jumped to his feet with another ball, ready to throw it right this time.

A blunted arrow caught the center of his mask, knocking his head violently backward and toppling him over.

“You’re dead! Reset!” Lance shouted, and the archers walked past Cal’s ‘corpse’ to retrieve their arrows.

This training doesn’t seem particularly safe. Fun to watch, though. Elliot commented.

Suck my dick, Cal thought, panting as he stared up at the Scowling Moon. The moon’s mouth was especially bright tonight.

“As a wizard, you are, and always will be, a high priority target. It’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to get those limp-wristed academy types to do their goddamned duty. They have to duck, and that’s beneath them.”

“Not you, though!” Lance said, hands on his hips, grinning from ear to ear. “You don’t have that pesky pride problem, the fear of death, or the option to refuse!”

“Well summarized.” Cal said.

“Thank you. Now! five more rounds, then we’ll be done…”

Cal sighed in relief. Each round was only a minute or two, so he didn’t have much longer to go before –

“Then we can start on your close combat self-preservation techniques!”

That wretch! I’ll make him lick my boots!

Bwahahah, he got you again! Elliot jeered.

I swear, I will find a way to hurt you, and we’ll see what you have to say then.

Good luck.

“Calvin!” Kala’s voice pierced through Calvin’s grouchiness, and shut Lance up completely. The master of the Yard turned around and immediately saluted Kala, along with the rest of the damnable archers who’d been using him as a living target the last hour.

“What is it?” Calvin asked, forcing himself to his feet, every muscle aching. It wasn’t like he could improve his Body without another Break, but Lance was merciless.

“Something’s wrong with Ella!”

True to her words, Ella was being half-carried by Trevor the translator, stumbling along. She couldn’t keep it up, and toppled to the ground, gasping for air.

A surge of mindless panic speared through his mind, thrashing around inside one of the partitions he’d made for the Guya. It still put some quickness in his movements.

“What’s going on? What happened?” he asked, his guts turning to ice.

“I don’t know!” Kala said, looking over Ella.

“I haven’t had real food in days,” Ella said weakly. “Gadveran food has been damaging my stomach…I need…meat.”

“Okay, I can get that.” Cal said, shooting to his feet, heedless of the pain in his legs. He needed to get some meat for Ella. He could probably grab some from the barracks kitchen, and be back in less than a minute.

“And…”

“Yeah?” Cal asked, turning back.

“Could you put it between two slices of bread?” Ella asked meekly, her voice faint.

“Got it,” cal nodded, heading toward the kitchen.

“With pickles and mayo?” she whispered.

“’Course.”

Cal began to sprint away at full speed, his feet eating up distance at an incredible pace. He felt like he was practically flying, heart pounding in his chest.

Wait a minute. She can’t eat bread.

Cal slowed down to a trot, then came to a halt a hundred feet from the barracks door before turning to face the two girls.

Ella was cackling madly, her hands wrapped over her belly as she kicked divots in the grass. Kala was covering her mouth, her eyes dancing with laughter as she giggled.

Neither of them had been looking at him the entire time, and so he’d bought every word without question, his judgement clouded by the Guya. This told him a couple things:

Kala and Ella knew he could tell a lie when people were looking at him. They enjoyed humiliating him. I don’t know, I take it as a pretty good sign when your girlfriends get along well.

The nine hells do you know? Cal demanded as he walked back.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ella said as Cal approached. “The princess has a more devious mind than she lets on.”

Cal felt a wave of relief that nothing was wrong with Ella.

“So you are okay then?” Never hurts to be totally sure. A foreign little voice whispered.

She chortled for a bit longer, irritating Cal to where he thought he was going to do something less than gentlemanly, before nodding. “I am fine.”

“Good, good.”

“Incha Huala, My Intuition is much better than yours, and after spending the evening with her, I think your friend here washes on both sides of the river.”

“What?”

“I think she hunts, and sews.”

“…..What!?” Cal asked again. Genosian idioms weren’t exactly his strong suit.

“I THINK KALA LIKES MEN AND WOMEN SEXUALLY!” Ella shouted.

Trevor the Translator went pale and glanced at Kala.

“What’d she say about me?” Kala asked.

“Too fast to make out, ma’am.” Trevor said, awkwardly standing up and shuffling away.

“What’d she say?” Kala asked again, turning her eyes to Calvin, her gaze burning with curiosity and strange, conflicted competitiveness for him, and towards him.

It was Calvin’s turn to bust out laughing, and Ella followed suit shortly after, her face crumbling like a dam under a flood, until they were howling with laughter.

“What is it?” Kala demanded. A moment later she narrowed her eyes and pulled a journal of paper out of Trevor’s bag and jotted something down.

“When I find out what those thirteen syllables mean, you two are in trouble.”

Calvin gasped between painful laughter, slamming his fist on the ground, tears in his eyes.

“Maybe…” Cal said, gasping for breath. “Maybe we will be. Maybe we both will be. Ahahahaha!”

Cal’s laughter was interrupted by the Master of the Yard’s iron grip hauling him and Ella to their feet.

“Good, looks like we’ve got more volunteers for practice. Princess, since you’ve got free time, come with me.” He nodded to Kala and proceeded to haul Cal and Ella over to the fighting rings.