***Matthias, Master Illusionist/Healer***

“How’s your temperature?” Matthias asked, putting the back of his hand on Suppan’s head. She felt normal, thank the gods.

“Stop worrying, I’ve got twelve endurance, and I’m not some frail old woman.” Suppan said, slapping his hand aside. “I’m a Legend.”

“A legend with a hole in her heart.” He said. “There’s every possibility some sickness rode in on the dagger, and my illusionary flesh doesn’t clean wounds, just patches them, and it’s not like we can cancel the spell for a while to clean it, like we could with Kate, either.

“You sure I shouldn’t watch over you while you sleep? Just to be safe.” He asked with a raised brow.

“Get out of here,” She said, slapping at him.

“Alright, Alright, goodnight,” He said, putting a hand on her chest.

Illusionary Flesh.

18/30 Bent Remaining.

He topped off the patch in her chest so the spell would remain strong through the night. It was an ability he’d gotten at the fifteenth level of Mnemonic Illusions. There was no such thing as a spell that could heal someone in an instant, but Matthias was damn close.

He stepped out of Suppan’s mansion, rolling his shoulders with a sigh. Today was a lot more work than he’d expected, but wasn’t that just normal? You take a paycheck, and they put you through Avashniel’s fiery domain. He glanced off to the side, where Euaha had placed his yurt on the wizard’s sandy side yard.

Euaha didn’t much care for the wound stabilizing effects of Illusionary Flesh, and he wasn’t hurt that bad, anyway. Kidnapping the Genosian and hiding her from the client was going to bite them in the ass, though, he just knew it.

I really hope it was more important than getting his dick wet.

Euaha wasn’t telling.

Not that their client would do anything extreme. Between the four of them, they were a force to be reckoned with.

His mind defaulted to the worst case scenario, like a true worrier, as he made his way to his room at the inn. He could have stayed in Suppan’s place, but it was woefully outside the range of the local library and red light district. His inn was the perfect distance from both.

He made his way through the quiet streets and clomped up the stairs to his rented bed, his body slowly shutting down in preparation to slump down into bed.

He tugged the door open and half-stumbled into his room, before he heard someone speak

“I want to hire you,” A young man’s voice said.

Matthias jumped in place, looking up and to the left at the source of the voice, sitting in his squeaky wooden recliner.

“Oh, gods!” Matthias gave a strangled cry as the Malkenrovian boy with the Nem collar watched him with a raised brow.

Illusionary Guardians,

Decoy

Invisibility

Blindness

Torpor

Call of the Void

13/30 Bent remaining.

Matthias panted as adrenaline surged through his body, pointing his invisible finger at the lad wearing the incredibly expensive collar, while his tangible decoy did the same. The boy continued looking at his real body, not showing any sign of being sleepy, blind or dead.

“Jumpy. Are you done? I’m not here to try to hurt you.”

“That’s just what someone trying to hurt me would say!” Matthias said, edging toward the door. He needed to tell someone.

“Here, I’ll prove it.” He held up his palms, and two knives emerged from them.

Matthias tensed, waiting for the boy to charge or throw them, but he simply stood up and tossed them lightly out the window.

“There. I have no spells, no knives, just a man looking to hire a Sorcerer.”

Matthias relaxed slightly, but he was still on guard.

“What do you want with me?”

“You broke my system. I saw it. I couldn’t summon my wasps when I wanted to and had to resort to a low-level Shifting. That was when I decided to run for help and put the fight on the backburner.”

“Wait…did we arrest the copy?” Matthias asked. That didn’t make any sense.

“No, he…you were using Bent. A construct can’t do that.”

The boy smiled.

“Dear Rian, you’re the copy. It’s been hours.”

“How did you manage to last this long? What’s it like being a copy? Do you think it had something to do with the collar or the Illusionary terrain? Maybe both?”

Matthias mind whirred into action, deconstructing the variables.

“Right, if the collar stabilizes your form, then suppressing the system may have broken any arbitrary time restrictions.” Matthias muttered to himself. This was amazing! With the proper experiments, and cooperation from a Gadveran dupdomancer, he could find a way to make permanent copies of people!

It was sad it was so expensive, but the cost could definitely be worth it with the right people, and perhaps they could find a way to reduce the costs. No one said it had to be a full sheath of Nem around their neck. Maybe a small amulet or bracelet would work?

“Hold up,” Calvin said, raising a hand. “Did you say suppressing the system?

“Yes, it’s one of my passive Abilities that make my spells harder to resist by interfering with the user’s System.”

“That,” the Malkenrovian captain said, snapping his fingers and pointing at him. “I need that.”

“Why?”

“My main body has an unwanted passenger. I want to buy some insurance.”

***Calvin***

The eyeless spider didn’t attack, after half an hour of holding their breath and keeping their heads on a swivel, it seemed like the creature wasn’t interested in them as prey. At least, not right now.

Maybe it wasn’t hungry, because there was no way a predator native to this place was unable to see them…

1/16 Bent Remaining.

“Put me down,” Calvin whispered. “I don’t want to explode into wasps on you.”

Kala nodded and gingerly lowered Calvin to the floor. He’d briefly considered summoning Nadia and having her carry him, but that didn’t really solve the main problem of his broke, bleeding leg, and his bruised, broken ribs. Calvin wasn’t interested in being a liability.

He knew from experience that when he used Heart of the Swarm, his body was put into some kind of stasis for the duration of the spell. Buying himself an extra…

Eighteen times eighteen…

Twenty times eighteen is three sixty, minus thirty six…three twenty four. Divided by sixty…

Five and a half hours. The duration of Calvinian summoning really snuck up on me. Plenty of time to regain Bent…Unless someone fucked with that, too.

So salty.

Of course I’m salty, I exercised for six months straight to raise my stats that high!

Okay, I think you need a demonstration of the benefits. Elliot said as Kala laid him down.

Try to raise one of your stats. Pump some iron or something.

With Kala’s assistance, Calvin was able to do some bicep curls, basically arm-wrestling the princess. She went easy on him.

+1 Strength

0/8 Warp Remaining.

So you can use it like normal Warp?

Yes and no. The Warp you can store can be used for four things: Raising secondary attributes, learning skills, raising skills, and modifying basic System functions, moving permanency over from dupdomancy to calvinian summoning, for example.

It’s more effective too, because since it’s a man-made…tank sort of thing, the Warp isn’t freely available to your body at all times. Think of natural Warp as being in an open bucket that splashes over onto everything you’re doing, while this has a pump and hose on it. Open it up when you’re doing the exercise or practicing the skill you want to raise, and Bam! Effortless Skill raising.

What you can’t do with it: raise primary attributes. Sadly, the System caught the infinite exploit right out the gate and shut me down.

Oh, and we can dump your storage tank into your body if you’re at a high level of Warp, helping to trigger a Break. Basically, the Warp you need to Break can be reduced by the amount you’re storing.

Calvin was forced to admit that it did sound good, but…

One more thing.

Yeah?

Who chooses when the Warp gets used? Me or you?

There was a lingering moment of silence.

I can make an activation system for the Warp Tank for you to use, no problem.

That would be appreciated. Calvin thought, eyes narrowed as a clattering noise began to echo through the back of his mind, with Elliot muttering to himself.

He winced as he felt a broken rib shift as his lungs expanded.

Time to ditch this body for a while.

Calvinian Summoning

Heart of the swarm.

Calvin’s broken body vanished as thirty-six giant wasps leapt out of the green smoke billowing from him, each one roughly his own body weight.

It made calculating his landing easier, as well as his minimum for running away.

Calvin’s perception expanded as it always did, forcing him to process information through multiple sets of eyes and sensitive antennae, forming a little cloud of awareness. The area wasn’t quite as good, due to the relatively small number of wasps, but between the thirty-six of them, they covered an area a little wider than his Tarka Skin, surrounding Kala in a protective circle of man-sized wasps crawling along the floor.

“I feel safer already,” Kala said with a hint of a smile, tossing the light above her finger up and making it’s glow redouble, shedding cold light on their surroundings.

The massive grey-furred spider was closer, having crept silently through the darkness while they hadn’t been paying attention to it.

It was stalking them.

Fun, Calvin thought, shifting a portion of his wasps to reinforce the blockers between Kala and the creature.

Let’s see if we can get rid of this thing. Calvin wasn’t keen on live and let live with something that dangerous. A moment of inattention and it could pounce on Kala, and that would be that.

It was at least six feet tall and twenty feet wide.

Big, but a dozen man-sized wasps should be able to take it down.

Without warning, Calvin sent a dozen wasps into the air, launching them forward and onto the still spider, jamming their stingers into the creature’s grey fur.

Calvin’s stingers broke through the creature’s carapace surprisingly easily, letting out some kind of icky white-grey blood, along with a healthy dose of Fever Wasp venom.

Then the grey fur moved under Calvin’s feet. Climbed up it.

The creature was made of identical grey eyeless spiders, about pal-sized, and linked together to form a single whole.

Calvin tried to leap away, but each of his dozen wasps were being pulled into the creature’s bulk by the pull of thousands of sharp little feet scratching against his own carapace.

What in the ever-dying abyss of all that is damned and…gah!

Calvin wasn’t able to curse, but his dozen wasps buzzed loud enough to made up for it, trying to stab the creature reflexively. Some kind of colony?

Kala took the hint and started moving away as the giant spider reared up and caught one of his fleeing wasps with it’s forelegs, somehow piercing it’s carapace with fangs distinctly made of more spiders, and injecting some kind of toxin into the wasp’s bloodstream.

Calvin experienced a lingering moment of pain as that wasp died before it dissolved into green mist.

Three of his wasps were able to pull themselves out of the creature’s grasp, and calvin turned his attention to Kala.

Run away, I’ll keep it busy! Calvin urgently waved for her to leave with his legs while the ones beside her pushed her away.

Calvin wasn’t doing a heroic sacrifice. Far from it. He could literally lose wasps to the creature for hours, as long as Bad Penny was being supplied with so much Warp. Hours Kala and the rest of his wasps could use to get some much-needed distance.

The creature might be annoying and immune to poison via separation, but Calvin had his own tricks.

He felt a bite at the joint of one of his antennae and flicked one of the small spiders off with his foot, crushing the thing in the process.

It tumbled to the ground, leaving a smear of grey gunk on his foot.

The poison was already working, though, causing a terrible pain and dizziness to go through the wasp’s body.

Calvin thoughtlessly touched the antennae with the same foot and the pain redoubled. He mentally winced, and took a look at the black carapace wasp foot he was currently using.

No way.

The grey gunk was moving.

Calvin held the foot real close to the creature’s compound eyes, and made out incredibly small grey spiders swarming up his foot, even as that wasp started getting dizzy from the pain.

A moment later, the wasp spun to the ground and died. Calvin turned the attention of his remaining wasps on it.

When the wasp dissolved into green smoke, a fist-sized amalgam of grey slime formed into a grey palm sized spider, setting off toward the main body that was currently taking swipes at Calvin’s wasps.

That was in my wasp’s head. It’s not venom. It’s injecting itself and eating flesh from the inside.

Calvin’s wasps split, bringing his total back up to thirty six in an instant.

Alright, fuck this.

Calvin rose up higher and began bombarding the thing with poison, dry firing above it and simply dripping onto the creature from his many stingers.

Lets see how your little pieces like being drowned in poison.

Apparently they did not, as large gobs of the creature sloughed off of the main mass, and it tried to get away from Calvin’s unfair aerial assault.

The creature twitched as calvin chased it, and it’s limbs shrunk down, combining.

Calvin paused, confused as it’s coloration turned brown, it’s shape turning vaguely humanoid.

An instant later, it’s shape resolved into Kala’s lithe body, sans clothes, and made of smaller Kala’s, each writhing over the other, inexplicably able to keep the whole together.

“I feel safer already.” It said in what was almost Kala’s voice.

“I feel safer already.”

“Safer already?” it said, tilting it’s head to look up at him.

Cool, new species. I think I’ll name it a Fractal Mimic. Think we can teach it to do tricks?

Calvin just felt like throwing up. Fortunately the wasp’s stomachs were empty.

Let’s just kill this thing.