“Well, we’re all gonna die,” Kip said cheerfully. The aging pirate dressed up in ill-fitting Gadveran armor, his calloused hands rested on the haft of his spear as he looked out into the face of death.

The typhoon had delayed the landing of the Malkenrovian’s strange fleet, crashing many hundreds of ships into the rocks outside the Mujenan port. The typhoon continued long after Jinnei arrived in the city, but the combined power of the Academy was no longer what it once was. They couldn’t hope to keep the storm raging forever.

And there were thousands more ships waiting just outside the range of the winds.

Jinnei glanced over the edge of the wall, unable to see the ocean through the sails.

“We all die at some point, Kip.”

“Yeah, but that don’t mean I like the idea,” Kip responded.

Jinnei’s eyes narrowed as the skips began crashing against the shore and began spilling open.

Yes, spilling open.

The ships broke apart on the beaches inside the cove, unleashing what looked like a wave of slithering black snakes.

These black snakes squirmed forward with a speed she could barely believe. They rushed up the side of the wall, somehow clinging to the smooth stone as if it were solid ground.

“Burn them off!” General Andra shouted to the handful of wizards on the walls.

“Sir,” The eldest wizard stammered. “If we do this, we won’t have anything left for the siege. Would it not be better – “

“Now!”

The wizard nodded and instructed the rest of the noble-born men and women to do as the general said, retrieving odd silver vials scarcely bigger than her thumb from their pockets.

Below them, heat bloomed as the wizard’s fire burned the black snakes off the wall, shriveling them as they fell off.

“You, form a team and round up barrels of oil! The wizards aren’t going to be able to hold this forever!”

“You,” She turned back to the wizards. “You’re done for now. Lock yourselves up inside your tower and wait further instructions. Focus on getting that Bent back as fast as you can. I don’t care how you do it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The grey streaked man nodded and left.

“Pirate. You’re sure those worms are as dangerous as you say?” She asked, glancing at Jinnei.

Jinnei nodded. “They get inside you, and suddenly you’re no you anymore. More than one of our crewmembers turned against us as we tried to save them.

“Anything else?”

“They’d got something like a Beranga wurm, it crawls under the water. It can’t match a ship going full speed, but it’s fast nonetheless. They should arrive any hour now.”

Andra seemed to stiffen up at the mention of a threat she was familiar with.

“Like the steel one three months ago?”

“I wasn’t here three months ago, but yes, it did have steel bolted to its body somehow, and blades in it’s jaw.”

“Don’t forget that it eats forests and poops out ships!” Kip added for good measure.

Andra’s eyes narrowed. “If I weren’t looking at a fleet that could carry an entire nation, I would call you mad.”

“It’s a good thing we’re looking at the same fleet then isn’it?” Kip said with a sneer before he remembered where he was. “um, general…sir,ma’am…forget I said anything.”

The pirate looked back out to the ocean with studied casualness. Andra watched him a moment longer before turning her gaze back to Jinnei.

“And what do you want as a reward for the advance notice? A bigger ship, perhaps? I’m sure there will be plenty to choose from if we survive this thing.”

“I don’t want anything,” Jinnei said, shaking her head. “I grew up in Gadvera.” She glanced back over at the old pirates lining the walls. “These bastards, on the other hand…”

“We want Malkenrovia,” Kip said. “Whatever’s there now, it ain’t human. That makes the land ours by default. We’ll have to find out who’s most closely related to the royal line, and make them our queen.”

Andra’s brows raised. “That’s a discussion to be had with the Hash’Maje, assuming we live through this.”

“I s’pose,” Kip said.

Their words dried up as the heat from the wizard’s fire began to fade away, allowing the black snakes to continue their ascent.

“They don’t like salt, either.” Jinnei remembered. “They died in the salt water. That’s probably why they had a fleet.”

“like slugs, huh?” Andra said, as she glared down at the dimming orange heat of the walls.

“Damn, but I could use that wasp-brat right now.”

“Who?”

“Captain Gadsint? The Wasp?” Andra said, eyeing Jinnei sideways.

Gadsint was the last name of a bastard. It was Calvin’s last name, actually, but he couldn’t possibly be the bastard she was talking about.

“I’ve been on the ocean the last quarter-year.” Jinnei said with a shrug.

“Figures,” Andra said before turning back to her troops. “Get the salt! The salt you bastards! Double time!”

“You sure your pirates can hold this strip of wall?” She asked looking back at Jinnei. “You seem like you’ve got some kind of leadership aura. It’s kind of puny but we’ll take all the help we can get.

Jinnei scanned her ragged group of pirates, including a handful of press-ganged Ilethans and gill-folk.

“Yes. We’re veterans, and we’ve dealt with these things before.”

Jinnei’s words were punctuated by a massive iron spike fired from the ocean slamming into the wall. The spike was covered in meaty nodules that burst, unleashing more of the black snakes above the line of heat created by the wizards.

The snakes flooded up, and Jinnei’s men quickly put the rags over their mouths before they began squishing the worm-like creatures en mass.

Nobody wanted what happened to Guliver to happen to them.

Where is Karen in all this? Jinnei know her mother couldn’t hold her hand through everything, though, and she was most likely saving her time and energy for when things got really bad.

There was a groan that shook the walls, and no less than three of the strange ship-building worms reared their heads out of the water, somehow immune to the salt that the little black creatures seemed to fear.

Damn. Still no Karen.

As one, the worms reared up and slammed their bodies into the walls of Mujenan, their heads even with the top of the wall. The reinforced stone shuddered, but held against the titanic pressure.

Jinnei wrinkled her nose as she caught a waft of rotting flesh form the slimy jaws in front of her, big enough to bite a ship in half.

As a single entity, the worms opened their mouths and heavily armored men poured out of them, covered in slime. Jinnei could see the side of the worms rippling as they continued to disgorge man after man.

Except they aren’t men.

The ‘men’ were curled in fetal positions as they landed on the edge of the wall, a strange umbilical cord dangling from their stomachs.

Did those things birth these?

As Jinnei looked closer, she saw that the armor they wore wasn’t armor in the proper sense, it was bonded to them, made of hardened chiton, formed into a facsimile of armor by convergent purpose.

“What are you waiting for!?” Jinnei shouted to her men. “Kill them before they start moving!”

They rushed toward the growing pile of bodies, hacking and slashing the still forms. The creatures seemed to be waking up, though, as some of them began moving. And their armor, it was rapidly hardening after they were born.

They only managed to kill fifty or so before they began to defend themselves, the umbilical cord shriveling and falling away as they got to their feet.

It was then that any doubt as to their inhuman nature was washed away.

Their armored, lipless mouths split open, revealing a horrifying array of slicing teeth and wiggling, grasping fingers meant to pull food into their gullets.

“Iyaaaah!” Kip squealed, half in anger, half terror, as he shoved the tip of his spear through the chest of the monster in front of him. Jinnei felt the power he siphoned off of her as a little prick of tiredness. She focused on the sensation, bottlenecking it. She couldn’t afford to give her men more than she had and pass out again.

“Where was the warning about these!?” Andra demanded, hacking through the creatures with greater ease than Jinnei had given her credit for.

“I don’t know everything, damnit!”

Even with the outpouring of strange inhuman soldiers, Andra made sure the snakes couldn’t make their way up the side of the wall and join the fight.

Hours of pitiless fighting went on and on, and Jinnei became more and more drained, her power used sparingly to bolster those who would otherwise fall. Andra held the rest of the Gadverans together through force of personality and strength of arm.

“Tell Bekvahl to give us another breather!” She shouted while making hand signs to one of her royal guards. The man nodded and sprinted away.

“Hold them off until the prince arrives!” Andra shouted, kicking several more enemies off the side of the wall, letting the fall do the work for her.

This is going to be one of those long days, isn’t it? Jinnei thought, narrowing the flow of energy to her men down to a thread.

***Calvin***

“So the lease effectively chokes them off over time?” Calvin asked.

“Effectively,” Kurawe agreed as they walked back to the city. “Murak balanced the resources required in the lease to appear nonessential, yet they function as the lubricant that keeps greater industries afloat. I suspect his plan is to ransom those resources back for an even greater share of the city’s wealth.”

“Damn.”

Calvin’s heart was finally starting to return to its normal measure, now that he was away from the [prospect of fighting an army and had firm control over the city. or at least, over the people who had control of the city.

The royal family would take over the administrative, governing duties, as well as control over the military, while Murak tended to the money that flowed through Uleis. The two factions were not friends, however.

The royal family couldn’t simply try to order their army to seize control of the commerce of Uleis, because Calvin represented a significant deterrant in his own right, combined with the fact that the Uleisan Royals had no idea which of the Legends that currently crowded the city were also under Calvin’s employ.

Ella’s uncle had planted the seed of doubt, and Calvin was going to capitalize on it.

Now all I have to do is get Ella knocked up a couple times, and I don’t owe him anything, either... Can humans and Genosians make babies?

I can add a mutation for that in Lady Killer or YPiiAC, Elliot said, ever helpful. I’ve been dabbling with something that could ensure fertility no matter the species of the other person. I call it The Captain Kirk. I’ll have you know I was pretty good at biomancy back in the day, and this sort of stuff is in my wheelhouse.

Calvin rolled his eyes. Of course he would experiment with something like that.

Let’s see. How much Warp in the tank?

8/34 Warp Remaining.

…Okay, whip it up. I’m probably going to spend the next week in The Filter anyway maxing out my Attributes. Calvin anticipated at least two more skills from Playboy.

Now that he had successfully kidnapped the Uleisan princesses, he had a combined Body and Mind that was damn respectable. About the level of a finely tuned Eighth Break Royal.

Thank the gods the Uleisan royals were Break-starved. Kala and Nadia hadn’t had time to grow into their abilities, but Kala’s father? Nadia’s father? Those guys might be able to beat Calvin soundly.

Especially when my Attributes are far below their maximum.

Which was exactly what spending another week underground would help fix.

After that…Push for my eighth Break, see where we can go from there. with the warp tnak, I might be able to break nine.

The atmosphere alone in the Filter wasn’t enough to trigger the eighth Break, but if he used his Warp tank to bolster the amount in his body at the right time, he should definitely be able to break into the realm of people told of in stories and song.

Like Karen the Bloodletter.

Come to think of it…Nah. No way they’re the same person.

Giant sword, check. Name, check, huge suit of armor ‘battle mode’, check.

…I’m sensing a pattern here.

Calvin shook his head and dismissed the thought. Didn’t matter now that he was raised by one of the greatest slaughterers of men of her time, he had other things to worry about.

Like building a country.

The lease payment on the country of Uleis gave him –

Just call it tribute and be done with it.

Fine. The yearly tribute from Uleis should go a long way toward funding the creation of a city-state of my own to the south. Once this war is over, I’ll be able to carve a larg chunk out of the jungle and set up a trade route between Juntai and Gadvera.

The Juntai were rather xenophobic, but they had specialties and needs like everyone else. Carving a trade route to their heart would very possibly unlock a completely new market. There’s gotta be a lot more than wood in the southern jungles…

Calvin was drawn out of his scheming by the sound of the massive glass chimes above the city wall, tolling to summon the guard, the majority of which were strung out behind him, trudging their way back to the city.

“Enemy attack?”

“I doubt it.” Kurawe said, pointing to the west side of the city. “They started over there. Whatever’s coming is coming from the west.”

“I’m going.” Calvin said.

“As you wish.”

Calvinian summoning

31/33 Bent Remaining.

Calvin created a massive wasp and saddled himself between the segments. A moment later, with a mental nudge, the enormous insect shot into the air, sending a punishing blast of air down beneath it.

In a matter of seconds, Calvin rose high enough to see what the commotion was about.

People.

A massive line of people. Men, women and children wearing Gadveran clothes, stretched back to the horizon.

The only reason Calvin could see for a line of refugees that big was that the war with Iletha was Not Going Well.

Why do the gods delight so in ruining my plans of conquest?

You’re telling me.

Let’s go see what’s going on, Calvin thought, urging his steed toward the stream of refugees.