“That’s interesting.” Calvin murmured, watching his index and middle finger burn with white flame. They were losing their color and turning into grey ash as the flame advanced from the very tip down past the first knuckle.

“Calvin!?” Kala’s voice snapped him out of it.

Blade body.

One of Calvin’s knives manifested in his hand, and with a few quick strides, he’d pinned the burning fingers on the hardwood desk, knife levered at the perfect angle to lop them off like brenka roots.

He watched, eyes narrowed as the burning approached the second knuckle.

If it goes past the second knuckle, I’ll cut them off, since I have no idea how far the damage will spread.

Thankfully the burning seemed to exhaust itself just before his second knuckle leaving Calvin with two purple-oozing stumps. He brought it up to his face, idly blowing ash-o-Calvin off his hand as he inspected the damage.

“So anyway, like I was saying,” Calvin continued, wrapping a nearby handkerchief around his bleeding hand. Damn thing didn’t even have the decency to fully cauterize the wound.

“I think we should also see what kind of change the removal of the mountains surrounding the march did to the local weather, and see what kind of progress the men and women in the Deep Jungle have made with their farms. I also need to oversee the creation of a military.”

“Calvin…” Kala said, crossing her arms.

“Kurawe, would you mind disassembling the bag of nuts and arranging it by unique material?”

“Immediately, Ravager,” Kurawe said, spilling the bag’s contents into his hand.

In a couple minutes, he had tiny bits of four different materials laid out in front of him on the desk.

First was the sugar dust, in a little brown pile. Then came the nuts themselves, washed of their sugar coating, followed by the beeswax, and the leather of the bag.

Calvin unceremoniously poked the sugar with his stubs.

“Nope.” He wiped his stubs clean and poked the nuts.

“Nope.” He moved on to the beeswax, poking the pale yellow substance.

Calvin’s wounded fingers burst into painful flames again.

“There we go!” He said, trimming the fingers just behind the knuckles with his knife.

“The beeswax?” Kurawe asked, frowning. He picked up the beeswax pouch and bit off a piece of it, chewing carefully. “I don’t taste anything other than beeswax. I don’t think there’s been any alterations to it. it’s just wax.”

“That makes no sense.” Kala said, shaking her head.

Sure it does, Elliot interjected. Lots of undead since time immemorial have strange, highly specific weaknesses. In the case of the Maculat, it seems to be Beeswax.

“But why?” Kala asked.

Umm…maybe because it’s a substance produced by a primarily female species with a reputation for its purity and being non-toxic. Purity and non-toxicity being antithetical to the concept of undead. In fact, the health benefits of beeswax are –

“People use beeswax for everything!” Calvin said. “Sealing jars, preserving foods, lipstick, - I could get killed by a peck on the lips! – waterproofing, lubing machinery, candles, adhesive,” Calvin trailed off, running out of things to mention. Oh, but there are more…

“Sealing envelopes,” Kurawe said, pointing to a stack of letters on the desk.

“Wait a minute,” Calvin said, thinking back to the white material that the Diocese of Trade could create out of Y’kuingi’s ooze. The one he’d used to seal the trade agreement.

Could that white ‘plastic’ replace beeswax?

For a lot of things, sure.

A path forward seemed to be opening itself up. Now that the diocese were dead, there was no one to stop Calvin from simply taking the machines they’d used to harden and soften the ‘plastic’ and having his Knick-Knacks reproduce them on a grander scale.

Rather than keep them to myself, perhaps put them into the hands of the Ooze Weavers. It wouldn’t allow me to dictate their prices, but it would go a long way toward bringing them to the table as one of the Sapient races.

Calvin knew which option Murak would vote for, but screw that. Making a profit took a backseat to replacing beeswax and not being an evil douchbag.

All he needed to do was gradually guide his economy towards finding viable beeswax alternatives.

Easier said than done.

“Well, that’s a matter for the future, in the meantime, I’m going to need a bodyguard to check my food, clothes and…environment for beeswax.”

Ooh, ooh! Nadia shouted in his head. I’ll do it!

“No offense, but I need someone a little less distractible.”

Boo.

It took a few hours, but Calvin finally settled on a design for his bodyguard. He took Kurawe’s mind, slimmed his body down and shrank him to roughly the size, shape and look of a nondescript Gadveran valet. He took the nerve systems of Fever Wasp antennae and put them on his creation’s fingers, so it could smell and taste beeswax acutely without having to literally sniff the stuff or put it into its mouth.

This was for the dual purpose of increasing the odds of spotting the substance in advance, and also preventing people from noticing the man licking everything that might have beeswax in it.

People were smart, and they noticed patterns. If Calvin’s valet was treating everything that might have beeswax as potentially poisonous, it wouldn’t take a genius to think Calvin might have an exploitable allergy.

It was a lot more than that, but for other people’s purposes, the effect was the same. They might slip some into his bed or hurl it at him out of nowhere, and Poof! Calvin would go up in flames and crumble into ash.

….

Leaving behind no corpse to speak of.

Holy Guar shit, I won’t leave a corpse! No corpse, no resurrection!

Yep. Dying as an undead is game over. Elliot said. Straight to the afterlife with us.

Calvin took a breath and calmed himself. Everyone else died permanently…for the most part… why should he be concerned by that?

A little germ of a thought that whispered he was unkillable had sprouted without him noticing it ever since he’d brought himself back to life.

It was now getting a healthy dose of reality in the form of a small pile of ash on the desk. Ash that used to be his fingers.

Well, that stomps that little sprout of hubris into the ground.

There was a knock at the door, and Kurawe answered it once again.

“Calvin Gadsint, your presence is requested in the main auditorium,” the messenger boy said.

Calvin met Kala’s gaze and shrugged.

“Let’s go see what they’ve got in store for me. And put that down.” Kala was sniffing the handkerchief stained with his blood. She touched the tip of her tongue to the blood-soaked cloth before recoiling away, her face scrunched up in disgust.

Calvin sighed. “Hand me the notebook, I need to make a correction.”

***later***

Calvin re-entered the auditorium, finding it empty of people save for the individual rulers, sitting around their semicircle in the center of the room.

“Calvin, come in,” The Hash’Maje said, ushering him in. “We’d like to have a few words with you before –“ He glanced down at Calvin’s hand. “Did you lose a couple fingers this evening?”

“It happens,” Calvin said with a shrug. “I’ll probably figure out a way to get them back by the end of the week.”

“…right. Anyway, take a seat,” he said, motioning to a nearby chair.

“Is it alright for me to be sitting down at the same table with you?” Calvin asked. “Isn’t there some kind of rule against it?”

“That’s what this is about,” The plainslander woman said. “We’ve decided to nominate you as a Royal.”

Calvin almost tripped over the chair.

“Just like that?” He asked, sitting down.

“You’re not a King. Not yet anyway. I suppose it means you’ve got the power to become one.” The Hash’Maje said.

“A Royal is someone with a level of personal power that defies logic. Each and every one of us is a weapon of last resort that could take thousands of lives in an afternoon,” The Bolesian said. “There are certain responsibilities and expectations associated with that level of power.”

“So we’re here to talk about the responsibilities,” Calvin said.

“Precisely.” Kala’s father slid a scroll across the table to Calvin. He glanced down and saw the document was chock-full of dense text. He started skimming to get a feel for it.

A Royal may not use their power to singlehandedly make war on a nation, although they may use their abilities in defense of their capital.

A Royal may not use their power to deliberately bring ruin to a nation by means of plague, famine, drought, shifting land-mass, denying vital trade, shifting perception of nationality, cursing lineages… etc, etc… Calvin zoned out a bit at all the fantastical ways people had found to ruin other nations in the past with their Abilities.

He’d actually already broken one of them with his Lace-swapping antics, marking the section with a finger. Unfairly outperforming a market with the intention of undermining economic stability.

Calvin skipped down.

A Royal is responsible for culling any Aberrations that may occur within their Demesne in a timely manner.

“What’s an Aberration?” Calvin asked, pointing it out with his ring finger.

“It’s a powerful human mutation with the distinct trait of spreading itself to others, growing like a cancer. Usually it’s associated with some kind of mental or physical assimilation, and the Aberration in question eventually becomes quite mad.” The plainslander woman said.

“Carem Sageva was an aberration,” the Hash’maje said, nodding.

Calvin glanced around the room. “You guys thought I might be one too, didn’t you?”

“While you have spread very rapidly in a political sense, you have not spread yourself to others, and so we voted that you are not, in fact, an aberration, simply a very powerful youth.”

“Two more votes, and I would’a had you,” Jonathon said, holding his thumb and forefinger a hairs breadth apart.

“And what if I refuse?” Calvin asked. “Just from glancing at these rules, I can tell it means I can’t take revenge on this bastard for selling my hometown to Malkenrovia.”

“if you choose not to accept the terms of this position, we will assign a Royal to the area you currently reside, with authority over Juntai and your March. If you prove reluctant to agree to this, we will combine our forces and remove you.”

“So either accept a nanny or die?” Calvin said, eyeing the rules again.

“Look at it this way,” The Hash’Maje said, his eyes solemn. “That agreement also prevents people like Jonathan from mind-controlling all your subjects from thousands of miles away and subtly convincing them to overthrow you, or worse, kill themselves. We agree to this, because fighting wars directly between each other results in such a massive loss of life that it isn’t worth it for anyone involved. Those who break this agreement, well, we gather together five of us, and we go kill them.”

“Where does it say that?” Calvin asked.

Kala’s father reached out and pointed it out, near the very bottom.

A Royal who willingly breaks these agreements shall be eliminated by a group of no less than five signatories of this agreement. Participation in these executions is mandatory for those born within the…

Calvin skimmed through the legalese. It basically said the five closest Royals were required to band together, hunt the rule-breaker down and kill them. Failure to do so got them added to the kill-list.

Well, that sounds positively draconian.

How else to you think they’re going to ensure the good behavior of people who are basically gods? I think it’s actually a good deal.

“So I agree to this, I’m responsible for all of these things, but otherwise free to run my territory any way I see fit? Otherwise you send someone else, Someone jaw-droppingly strong, who may or may not like the way I do things, and could at any point, mark me as a target for extermination? And not being a signatory, I am afforded no particular protection?”

“That’s the gist of it.”

“Well then,” Calvin said with a smile. “I’m happy to become a Royal. Give me fifteen minutes to finish reading all of the rules, and a pen. I’m also going to want a copy of the rules for my office.”

A few minutes later, Calvin was scratching his signature into a gold-bound folio of names that seemed to radiate Bent from some kind of enchanting.

“You’ll have to excuse my handwriting,” Calvin said, “Some of my fingers took the weekend off.”

Things known about Maculat Mulieres: (Calvin’s Journal)

Blood is a rich, pleasing purple color, very bitter, with a strong numbing sensation. Smell is reported as being pleasant. May cause compulsive behavior. Definitely causes compulsive ingesting.

Bent Regeneration has come to a complete standstill and must be supplemented by Lady Killer.

Eating seems to be more of a habit than a necessity. Went ten days before I’d noticed it.

Strong compulsion to corrupt, reverse, or otherwise undermine strongly held beliefs. Hypothesized to be a learning behavior to practice a Maculat’s ability to ingratiate themselves with others. Can be avoided or smothered, but otherwise control is difficult

Beeswax causes flesh to burst into flame and ash at a supernatural rate, burning away any flesh about an inch back from the point of contact…which sucks.