It’s driving me mad, it’s making me crazy! Elliot caterwauled in the back of Calvin’s head as they trudged through the dense forest, smacking mosquitos off every couple seconds.

How do you know so many songs? Calvin thought as he killed yet another biting insect.

Oh, they don’t have a crystalization of all human knowledge where you come from? Elliot clicked his tongue. Sad.

It was times like this he questioned his decision to walk all the way to his land rather than fly there.

Sure there were reasons, like laying down a simple trail with his knick-knacks, and experiencing the journey first hand so he knew exactly how difficult it was, the symbolism of being the first one to traverse the land, etc. etc.

At this point, hot, sweaty, itchy and damp in places humans were never meant to be damp, Calvin was reconsidering all the logic behind that.

I could have flown there, but noooo.

Calvin glanced over his shoulder and spotted the massive caravan full of raw materials. The train ran so long Calvin couldn’t even see the end of it, and that more than anything was what made up his mind.

He only had the bare essentials for starting a…

What’s the word for a marquis’ land, specifically? Marquidom?

I don’t know. A Duke has a Duchy. So maybe you get a Marky?

“It’s a March.” Kala said from behind them, looking just as uncomfortable as Calvin felt. “A borderland wilderness granted to a Marquis to develop. While the title is minor, the distance from the country make you the final arbiter of the law in your lands. Almost a king unto yourself.”

The only people who didn’t seem bothered at all were Baroke and Ella who were too simpleminded to be uncomfortable, and used to the jungle, respectively.

Is it just me or is it creepy the way she reads our thoughts? Elliot whispered.

Nope. I’m pretty sure she’s reading your lips.

Calvin glanced back at the train of supplies again, getting his thoughts back in order. He only had enough materials there to start building the hub of his March. Even then the wagon train trailed far out of sight through the winding jungle.

He could fly himself there. He could possibly even fly the entire train there.

But what about the next one? And the one after that? Calvin couldn’t allow himself to continue being the lynchpin that held his entire territory together. Not to mention if his job became ferrying supplies back and forth with his summons every day for the rest of his life, that would suck.

So instead he was building a makeshift road to the Garavel river in the middle of the woods, completely surrounded by mosquitos, his Knick-Knacks cutting trees in half and pounding them into the earth to create relatively smooth surfaces for his wagons to travel across.

Then the boats.

It took another day and a half to make it to the edge of the Garavel river.

Calvin flew up into the air on a wasp with Kala beside him and marked the exact position that was ideal for a port, a bend in the river a bit further west where the river turned south, away from Gadvera. It was the closest the river got to Gadvera before it started turning away. Once they marked it and got the rest of the wagon train there, they started building.

BAroke fell in with the giant knick-knacks and dumb labor easily enough. The giant archer carried tree trunks over his shoulder that should by all accounts have crushed him.

Calvin’s Strength was twenty-four, and while that was far outside the bounds of normal, it was still only roughly the strength of two and a half men. Two and a half men would find themselves unequal to the task of lifting those logs.

Watching Baroke pass them back and forth to giant Knick-knacks as they dug massive holes and began filling them with cement, Calvin wanted to shake his head with disbelief. He still wasn’t sure if the giant meathead had the better plan.

The work went by incredibly quickly thanks to the knick-knacks, but some stages simply required that they wait, and Calvin didn’t have any kind of magic that could make that go by faster.

Although Kala’s dad might. Calvin thought, watching the concrete dry around the poles.

I’ve been thinking about your description, and I think he was speeding himself up to a fraction of light speed, not stopping time. Elliot said as they watched the Knick-knacks put together the boardwalk.

What makes you say that?

If time had actually been stopped, nobody should have been able to move against the air in the room, but the biggest hint was the lights dimming. Light hits your eyes not in a steady stream, but individual photons that ping your retina one after the other, yea? If you were experiencing time at a greatly altered speed, the rate at which photons hit your eyeballs would be lower, relatively.

So it would look darker.

Yeah. This reminds me of that time I had the idea to turn Venus into a habitable farming planet by wrapping the planet in a time acceleration field, which would reduce the average heat and sunlight. This was before Warp and the war with the Harbingers, so there was no economical way to dick with time…at the time.

Nowadays you could probably plug generators into siphons to accomplish exactly that.

Wow, just imagine if all the siphons really are is wall outlets for assholes way more advanced than we are.

Kala was busily writing in her notebook, tongue peeking out the side of her mouth as she concentrated on writing.

After work was done for the night, Calvin clomped back to his tent, and stumbled into an intervention.

Kala and Ella were sitting on his bed.

Not in the tousled hair, just-had-fun way, or the we-were-Just-about-to-get-started-what-are-you-waiting-for way, but the straight spined, stern-faced disapproval kind of way.

Ambush!

“Calvin, it’s come to my attention that you’re treating Ella like some common fling.”

“What?” Calvin asked, reflexively stepping backward.

“In Genosian culture laying with a girl for a year without offering to marry her is very disrespectful,” Ella said with a frosty look.

“Well how was I to know that?” Calvin asked.

“That’s a pretty common sentiment for most women.” Kala interjected.

I’m not a woman. Calvin bit back the pointless retort and stopped for a second of introspection. He’d reflexively stopped himself from feeling any kind of emotional attachment to Ella since the night he’d had that Guya poured down his throat, and that of course precluded the notion of asking for her to stay with him forever.

“Ella, I think you’re beautiful and courageous, and I feel like I love you and would do anything to protect you, but I don’t know if that’s me or a fucking drug your father rammed down my throat. No offense.”

“None taken,” Ella said with a shrug.

Calvin took a deep breath and scratched the back of his head, pulling the chair away from the desk to face them in the oversized tent.

“So what now?” Calvin asked. “I’m afraid if I drop my guard for one instant, that shit in my head is going to wipe every part of me away and there won’t be anything left of Calvin Gadsint, just a lovestruck slave.”

“The Guya has long since left your system.” Ella said with a placating tone.

“How am I supposed to know that!? Calvin shouted, momentarily losing control of himself. “What if we’re still in that damn tug-o-war and giving a single inch is tantamount to losing!?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Ella said, her eyes shimmering. “Please.”

“Calvin,” Kala said, putting a hand on Calvin’s knee. The contact made the hair on Calvin’s neck stand up. That’s not right. I’m stronger than that. Calvin wasn’t going to give anyone or anything the satisfaction of allowing himself to lose his calm over this.

Calvin took a deep breath and left Kala’s hand where it rested, allowing the distinctly uncomfortable sensation to wash over him, temporarily filling him with a barely contained sensation of dread, wrongness, and prickling skin. He wanted to stand up and run, or slap her hand away from him, but he muscled past those feelings.

Eventually the horrible sensation faded entirely, replaced with the warmth of the girl’s skin against his own.

Extensive training has increased your attributes.

+1 Stability

“Calvin, focus on everything that’s happened between now and then. Remember the order of events, how everything happened, one thing after another. You’re here, now. With us.”

“Goddamn,” Calvin said between breaths, rubbing his forehead with his palm. “Locked up some things tight in there.” he glanced over at the misty-eyed warrior on the bed and was flooded with the desire to make her feel better.

He nearly hugged her before he clamped down on it again. I am not letting the Guya tell me what to do.

“Tell you what,” Calvin said, glancing between Kala and Ella. “I’ll propose if you can give both of us something that reverses the effects of the Guya, and still want to be my Uenha.

“That’s not fair!” Kala said, scowling at him. “There’s nothing that –“

Kala stopped as Ella held up a hand.

“There is a way to accomplish that.” Ella said.

“And you waited until now to tell me?”

“I…liked being with you.” Ella said.

“Because of the damn drug!” Calvin said.

Ella sighed and took a small corked tube out of the pouch at her waist.

“As my father’s successor for the role of Maje, I learned many potions beyond simply Noeula and Guya, including a way to revert their effects.”

“Did you know I was going to react this way?” Calvin asked as Kala produced a pair of bowls and knives, setting them between them.

“Ella came to me for advice, and I can literally see all your buried baggage,” Kala said with a wink, “Let’s say I had a very strong hint something was holding you back.”

First the genosian made something similar to Guya, bubbling green fluid, which turned pink when she added a ground up glowing tooth and their blood.

Then she produced a separate bottle of the black gunk from the inside of the Genosian mountains. She took a single fingernail of the bubbling pink fluid and dripped one drop into the vial of black goop.

The vial bubbled violently for a moment, then calmed down, turning a dark green.

“Just a sip will do it,” Ella said, taking a swig and grimacing before offering it to Calvin.

Ah what the abyss.

“If I die, cut my head off immediately,” Calvin muttered before he tilted his head back and took a swig of the vile concoction.

It tasted awful, acrid and burned on the way down, with flavors he didn’t even know how to describe.

Oh, god, I can taste it from here! it’s like burnt plastic that a dog shat on!

Calvin pushed aside Elliot’s complaining and the retch-inducing flavor and concentrated on how he felt. Would the potion send him on another inner journey complete with tug-o-war? Was it a trick to make him even more enamored with Ella? Calvin wasn’t even sure what made him say yes to taking a strange substance from Ella.

Probably the other strange substance, Calvin thought with a chuckle.

“Is this thing even working?” Calvin asked, eyeing the vial.

“Guya makes an empathetic bond between the drinkers by sharing some of their most painful memories. Ones so painful they literally left an echo in the blood and shaped the person they were. It doesn’t do much more than that.” she said.

Ella glanced up at him.

“Can you remember what the pains that shaped me were?” She asked.

Calvin thought about it for a moment, but drew a blank. He was absolutely sure he’d seen something inside her when he’d taken the Guya, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember it. All that seemed to happen when he thought of it was a foggy head and a vague suggestion of pain. Not particularly helpful.

Also, he didn’t desperately desire to make her feel better anymore. The sensation was muted, less visceral. Still there, but more…Calvin.

I guess it worked.

“No I can’t remember them.”

“And do you still think I’m beautiful and courageous?” Ella asked with a hint of a smile.

Calvin gave a grudging answer. “Yeah, I still think that. you’re pretty and you’ve saved my life on multiple occasions by now, after all.”

“Good,” Then I still want to be your Uenha….if you’ll be my Poeor?” She asked hesitantly, glancing at the bubbling pink liquid in the center of the room.

Go back to the way I felt before? Why would I do that?

Calvin looked at the Guya. Because this time it’s my choice, not a funnel in the mouth. Calvin thought, taking a deep breath.

“Oka-“

“Whoops!” Kala said, ‘accidentally’ cutting her palm with a shard of glass from her teacup and splashing it into the bowl.

“Anehua ga buenhe sa T’chika!” Ella shouted, which roughly translated to “By the powers, what are you doing, crazy woman?” albeit a bit more derogatory.

Genosian Language had reached level 6! 30% Correction.

“Sorry, let me take care of that,” Kala said, grabbing the bowl before they could react and downing a third of it, reeling back with a chuckle as Calvin snatched it out of her hands.

“This was your plan all along,” The Genosian warrior woman accused, face scrunched into a scowl.

“No, I absolutely wanted to help you two get over the Guya thing, but in war and politics,” Kala said, leaning against Calvin’s bed, head drooping as she bandaged her palm “Never have just one…goal. Did I mention I love you guys?”

Kala’s head began to slump, the half-finished bandage soaking up the blood from her palm.

“Damn,” Calvin said, drinking half and passing it to Ella. Kala had the damndest way of forcing him to do what she wanted.

Ella shook her head and drank the rest before kneeling on Kala’s other side, helping Calvin tighten her bandage. Calvin was barely finished tying the knot before things started to get weird.

Calvin found himself in a three way struggle in what he’d come to think of as the Bridge of Eyes, assaulted by the pain of the death of Kala’s mother and Ella’s sister, once again finding himself unable to answer with a pain that could rival theirs.

The only respite was that the bridge seemed to be jostling, shifting directions constantly, but he could feel himself being pulled painfully apart divided into two and consumed by the brown and green bridges that pulled him into themselves.

For all that he’d done in his life, personal tragedy had passed him by. He simply didn’t have the same juice these two had in forming their personalities.

Calvin ducked inside himself as he searched for something to offer, some defining moment, finding the same broken section of wall inside his mind that he’d seen before.

But this time it was different.

Large black tubes emerged from the rough edge of the wall, sinking into the walls that housed the picture frames of memories around him.

That’s new. Calvin thought, the struggle to keep himself from losing the battle of wills, momentarily set aside.

The cave broken into the walls of his mind was just as cold and forboding as last time, except the tubes running from the strange mirror in the center of the room, up and onto the pitch black ceiling, creating strings of blinking lights above him.

Calvin stepped closer, ignoring the shadow figures around him as he approached the mirror. Once again the mirror seemed to be backed by a stone obelisk, but this time it was sporting strange black tubes, and the man standing inside it wasn’t a man.

The creature looking back at him was nearly seven feet tall, not including the strange circular crest atop its head. It had ruddy brown skin and digitigrade legs, wearing nothing but a few belts with pockets. It seemed to bear some kind of crossbow over It’s shoulder.

The scene behind it was much like the one he’d seen before, strange crystalline buildings, left shattered and burning by some kind of cosmic war.

The creature silently held out a hand, rough palm emerging from the mirror surface of the obelisk.

Calvin took it.

***

Harbinger year 6885

“My lord, the Mad King’s forces deployed the new weapon against Pelior.”

Grethna’s eyes widened. They finished it already? No, that wasn’t supposed to happen. I stopped it! I stopped it! A wave of guilt began to crash over Grethna’s body as the implications began to sink in.

Pelior was the home of the rebellion. Where every Harbinger who opposed the Mad King could safely rest. Where their families lived. Where Jeneveve lived. It was supposed to be out of the empire’s reach, but this…this had proven otherwise.

“There’s no one left.” Grethna’s assistant said quietly, while the ship full of Grethna’s most loyal men and women watched, processing his words.

“What about their souls?” Koke, a massive paragon of Harbinger perfection asked, lifting the messenger off his feet. “We can bring them back, right?”

“The weapon ripped their souls from their bodies and flung them to the far corners of the universe,” the messenger said, choking. “Maybe further. We won’t reunite with them in this lifetime.”

“Fuck!” Koke shouted, tossing the messenger aside. “I’ll kill every last one of them!”

“No!” Grethna shouted, casually bringing the others to their knees with his aura. “I’ll go. I’ll turn myself in. I’ll kill the mad king myself, and we will be free.”

“I…” Grethna took a shuddering breath and muscled past the mounting guilt at his terrible decisions and lack of foresight. “I know that all of you have nothing left to lose right now, but it’s my selfish wish that all of keep going anyway. You’re all that’s left of the rebellion. If you die…It dies with you.

Koke struggled to his feet, barely managing to overcome the suppressive power Grethna exuded.

“My lord, please. Take me with you.

“Koke, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I don’t want to subject you to this. there’s no purpose to it.

“I’ll follow you to death and beyond, My lord. The Mad king has nothing I fear.” Koke, said, saluting in typical Harbinger style, his fingers folded above his heart.

“I was afraid of that,” Grethna said, his heart sinking. He knew no matter what, there was nothing he could say to stop Koke without compromising everything he’d worked for.“Come on then, let’s face our end.”

Together the two of them stepped through the teleporter, arriving in a dark and musty room, thick with the smell of rusting metal.

“What’s this?” Koke asked, looking over his guard at the abandoned building they had found themselves in. The big man had obviously been expecting the silver halls of the King’s city.

“You brought one of your rebel friends,” Emelior, Consul to the Mad King said, as he emerged from the shadows. “A strong one too. That was stupid.”

“What is this?” Koke asked frowning.

“I gave you Pelior’s location so you could inspire more people to join our cause, not gut us!” Grethna shouted.

“I did inspire more people to join your cause,” Emelior said with a sly grin. “As a matter of fact, after the treatment of Pelior, discontent is spreading across the entire empire like wildfire. No less than a dozen planets have opted to openly declare our lord The Mad King and throw their lot in with yours, and even those that haven’t harbor millions of malcontents who secretly support you. Your rebellion is assured to succeed now, whether you are around to see it or not. Which you won’t.”

More harbingers began to emerge from the shadows, melting out of thin air with their characteristic natural command of Bent

“My lor_” Koke choked off the honorific halfway through “Grethna! What in Vashniel’s name is this? You gave them our home!”

There were no more words exchanged as Koke lunged forward, arms outstretched aiming to grapple Grethna’s crest and break his neck.

It was a brief but vicious struggle in which Grethna was forced to kill his best friend on the same day his home, his love, and his rebellion were stolen from him.

***

“Hey dude, the poles are done setting,” Baroke’s voice drilled through the tent siding a moment before the flap opened. “The guys wanna know if we should get started –“ The huge archer stopped in place as he saw the tangled mess of naked limbs sprawled around Calvin’s room.

The big guy paused, jaw hanging low as Calvin groaned, glaring up at him through bleary eyes and a pounding headache, feebly trying to drag the covers off the bed to cover the three of them.

“You know what? You seem busy. I’m just gonna handle it.”

“Morning,” the slender princess muttered as the flap closed, plunging them back into comfortable darkness. Her eyes were red and puffy as she held her forehead, sitting up off the floor and pushing one of Ella’s oversized arms off of her chest. “Everyone still alive?”

The disturbance woke Ella, who pushed herself up with a sharp intake of breath and a massive yawn showing off her razor-sharp teeth.

“Still alive.” Ella said, smacking her lips. “And ready for the next part.”

“Next part?”

“Right,” Kala said, nodding.

“The tattooing the husband part.” Ella said with a wicked grin. “It’s not official without it.”

Calvin thought back to all the Genosian men he’d seen with intricate tattooing on their head and backs.

“Crap.”