Chapter 209: After-Life

*Author’s note: This one’s gonna piss some people off.*

“Alright, that’s enough. As nice as it would have been to get revenge, I can’t risk failure here. I’ll catch you later.” The Harbinger muttered, drawing itself to its feet. With its good arm, it pulled out a small black metal handle with a little tube –

Dodge! Elliot’s scream was loaded with urgency, shocking Calvin into action.

Calvinian summoning

Atom Ant

Heart of the swarm

1/47 Bent remaining.

Calvin burst into millions of wasps, scattering in every direction. Whatever the attack the object made, enough of the swarm should be able to survive to allow him to –

The scene around Calvin flickered. He went from seeing everything from a million tiny eyes to being locked into two. The world around him was different, too. He was inside the office in his tower to all appearances, and…Ella was in front of him, her arm outstretched.

The Genosian girl was smiling, but in her gaze, he could feel something was…wrong.

“What happened?” Calvin asked, frowning.

“You died, I’m grinding the Chained Spirit Skill to earn Continuity so you stop asking me that question.”

I’m dead!? He hadn’t even felt anything from the creature’s attack. Is this an illusion? He scanned the room. Every detail was perfect, and his head didn’t feel cloudy or anything he’d come to associate with mind-magic.

Matter of fact, he felt better than he ever had before, practically brimming with energy. He felt like he could sprint a marathon, he felt like he could hold his breath indefinitely. He felt like…his heart wasn’t beating.

Huh.

“If you’re gona grind the skill, Then you should get –“

“Bottled Bent by the thousands, yes, you’ve already arranged it. Should be in by tomorrow.”

Well, if that’s taken care of, maybe we can do something a little less urgent.

“Well, how about –“

“Sorry, but you don’t last that long yet.” Ella said with a quirked smile.

“You don’t-“

“Even know what you were about to say?”

“Eh, it-“

“Was worth a shot?”

“Godsdamnit! Stop finishing my -”

“Sandwiches.” She said with a smile.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” Calvin muttered, squinting at her. Her dad finally got what he wanted, and all of Calvin’s territory in the bargain.

“No, I am not.” Ella said, her gaze radiating buried anguish.

Sure she’d be upset if I were dead, but Ella was raised Genosian. They don’t feel bad for their Chained spirits. They honor them as valued ancestors and pass them down from father to son for generations. Being one is something to be sought after by the mightiest warriors. She shouldn’t be quite this upset. Disappointed that our relationship has taken a different turn, sure, but not entirely despondent.

Calvin scanned the room.

“Where’s Kala?”

“She’s out. Got bored watching you ask the same questions over and over again,” Ella said, glancing away from him. Even without feeling her gaze, he could feel her emotions through the tattoo on his back. He could tell Ella was misleading him. Her flaring emotions felt like he’d picked at a fresh wound.

“You’re lying.”

“I am,” She said, wiping a tear away.

“So where is she?” Calvin asked, becoming increasingly disturbed by Ella’s silence.

“I don’t know,” Ella admitted, shaking her head. “On the same day, those special tattoos you made for us stopped working, first yours, then Kala’s.”

Is she dead, then? Calvin thought, ice settling in his spine.

“Recently though,” Ella admitted, staring into the distance. “There’s been short bursts of terror coming through the tattoo.”

“Short bursts?” Calvin asked, mind racing. He had no idea what could obscure the marriage tattoo’s connection between the three of them. He’d tried, but the most he could do was muffle it.

“I’ve heard stories from the people who were there when she vanished.” Elle said, her voice trembling. “She was wounded and drawn into the earth beneath her before anyone had a chance to react. No one saw who did it, but I have an idea what might have allowed such a thing to happen.”

“What?” Calvin asked, eyes narrowed.

“The Stone-Diver tribe has an Ability they pass from father to son that allows them to swim through earth and stone. The description of the attack matches their tactics.”

“You’re telling me Genosians have Kala?” Calvin asked, his anger rising.

Short bursts of terror…

“Are you telling me she’s a Chained spirit!?” Calvin asked, leaning forward. It that why I can’t feel her tattoo!? She was killed, eaten, and is now being used like a godsdamned plaything by your fucking cousins!? Is that what you’re trying to say!?”

Ella’s face crumpled, and she buried her face in her hand, shocking Calvin out of his rage.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation, is it?” Calvin asked.

Ella shook her head.

Calvin took a deep breath. “Alright, let’s calm down and talk about this slowly. Give me the highlights of everything we’ve talked about, and what our plans are.”

***later***

“UNO!” Calvin shouted, slapping the second-to-last card down, only to discover Elliot and Nadia had disappeared, and were now watching the moving picture box Elliot called the ‘TeeVee’.

“How long was I out that time?” Calvin asked.

“Just over an hour,” Elliot said.

Level four now, then. Hopefully Ella gets Continuity soon. Assuming I got eaten by Ella and not some rando.

The thought of his corpse getting eaten by anything at all gave Calvin the willies, but there wasn’t much he could do about it at the moment. His blackouts had lasted longer and longer, in easily discernable increments. One minute, then eight minutes, then almost half an hour. All the times were consistent with the Chained Spirit skill being leveled.

****

Calvin burst into millions of wasps, scattering in every direction. Whatever the attack the object made, enough of the swarm should be able to survive to allow him to –

The scene around Calvin flickered. He went from seeing everything from a million tiny eyes to being locked into two. The world around him was different, too. He was inside the office in his tower to all appearances, and…Ella was in front of him, her arm outstretched.

The Genosian girl was smiling, but in her gaze, he could feel something was…wrong.

***Kala***

“A little bird told me you can see the future?” A woman whispered in her ear. A hand grasped her shoulder and pulled her backwards.

Rather than collapsing to the ground, the stone beneath her acted like a liquid, swallowing her up in an instant. The last thing she saw before the stone flowed over her eyes was Hugar lunging toward her.

After that, everything went black.

-

Kala gasped, trying to sit up, but her body was embedded in the ground, with only her head exposed to air.

“So Kala, tell me about the Siphons,” a woman’s voice said from behind her.

“Not a chance,” Kala said, her heart slamming in her chest.

“Always the same answer,” the woman said with a chuckle. “It’s fine though, you don’t have to say anything.” A moment later, she felt a piercing pain on the side of her head. A moment later a rush of paralyzing euphoria made her jaw go slack as her identity was eroded, her thoughts becoming muddied.

***Carem, still in the body of his wife***

+1 Mind!

+1 Mind!

Starting to get less from this princess by the day, Carem thought to her- himself –

Still, a hundred and sixty Mind would make the gods themselves tremble, I swear. Staying in this body is its own special kind of hell, though.

From what he’d learned about the Siphons, he knew there was a special warehouse in Uleis that could raise him his sixth Break. All he needed to know now were the finer details about where exactly it was, and how to get in undetected.

I can’t believe that fool thought he’d killed me. He meant the Diocese, obviously. The diocese’s death had been pretty believable, after all, so it was no surprise that Calvin thought he’d been destroyed.

As it turned out, the Ilethan mind-magic technique of Leashing was quite potent, allowing him to access his copy’s mind and alter it at will. it was the basis of Mind-Slavery.

It took time and effort to create a Leash, along with a subdued victim. He’d gained the time after the city had rioted, giving him his Fifth Break, allowing him to gain more powerful Mind Magic from the System, rather than simply winging it. He’d controlled the weak-minded guards like puppets, forcing them to escort him all the way to the Diocese, where he’d swiftly subdued them, setting them about the task of causing even more destruction.

Trade, he’d kept for his own body, but at the last second, he’d hesitated. He didn’t know if he’d truly cross over or if he’d simply get to experience getting killed by his new acquisition.

So he’d Leashed it.

The still-groggy copy had been unable to prevent Carem from forcing his will upon him and creating a Leash, allowing him total access to the man’s mind at any time he wanted. In the former Diocese of Trade’s case, he’d given the man a memory of snapping the original’s neck and taking his place. The outcome that likely would have happened without interference.

During the fight between his puppet and the summoning Wizard, he’d carefully observed from the sidelines while Calvin had utterly crushed his newfound Abilities with overwhelming force and years of battle experience.

Carem was just too new at using his abilities to present any kind of significant threat, so he had to disappear for a while, until his death was an accepted ‘fact’.

He was leaving to do just that when he heard Calvin accuse the dark-skinned girl of being able to see the future.

His obsession for absorbing unique experiences reared its head up again, and he couldn’t resist taking the bait. After all, Calvin had been killed by the other adventurers, the inhuman creature of similar power had also been destroyed, and the rest of them looked tired.

Only the big woman was any threat to him, and she was halfway across the city.

He saw an opportunity, and he took it.

“Can you stop thinking about Calvin?” Carem said as he sorted through her experiences, “It’s making this awkward for the both of us.”

He didn’t get any answer but a wordless groan. Not that being trepanned made people particularly chatty.

>> Chained Spirit Has suffered Data Corruption!<<

Purging corrupted Data.

Restoring Backup from last uncorrupted Continuity timestamp

Backup Restored.

Initializing.

Repair Complete.

Continuity has lost 2 minutes and 43 seconds of unpackaged memory.

Carem hummed tunelessly as he held his hand out above the princess-shaped hole in the floor and summoned another one.

Chained Spirit

Green smoke roiled out of Carem’s good hand, sinking into the empty space in the solid stone, forming a skeleton, then wrapping it in flesh.

***Calvin***

Calvin blinked, and everything changed.

Suddenly he was in two places at once, experiencing both his office, and the black room with Nadia and Elliot simultaneously.

A second later, there was another him, standing in a slightly different place. both were linked to him and at the same time, they were him, they needed no direction whatsoever, each of them wrapped up in their own thoughts, which were so similar as to nearly be echoes of each other.

Is

Is

Is that

Is that-

Is that me?

Are-

Are-

Are we-

Are we-

Are we dead?

Kala!

Kala!

Kala! I’ve

Kala! I’ve

Kala! I’ve got to

Kala! I’ve got to

Calvin winced as the thoughts seemingly reverberated through his head, and he instinctively connected to the Calvin’s that were behind the curve and brought them up to speed with the others, making the thought-scape one cohesive harmony sung by dozens of Calvin’s as Ella downed another potion, her grey-purple skin damp with sweat.

The memories of dozens, hundreds of conversations with Ella hit him like a bull Guar, he remembered her gradually deteriorating condition, her desperate fervor, and Calvin realized that she’d been practicing the skill for a solid month, and hadn’t taken a break in days. Empty glass bottles, worth a gold coin apiece, were scattered haphazardly around the floor, and there was a suspicious flaky powder on the desk.

Grave dust.

It was the drug that Kala had shown him, the one that activated the brain’s fear and anxiety response, allowing a person to artificially raise their skills faster.

She must have shown it to Ella, too

“Ella, Ella!” Calvin said selecting the closest body and stepping forward, taking the open bottle of Bent out of the Genosian’s hands.

“I wanted to get all of you back,” Ella said, her eyes puffy and bloodshot from crying, pupils dilated and heart hammering from fear. “I thought if I raised the Skill to the same level you had it to before I took Continuity, you would…”

She motioned halfheartedly at him.

“You need to sleep.” Calvin said. “You’ve got a lot of Endurance, but that’s only going to slow down the damage to your body, not prevent it.”

Ella shook her head, pushing herself to her feet, empty Bent bottles skittering out from underneath her.

“No, I’m so close to level thirty. I can take Continuity then.” She said, trying to push him off with weakened arms.

“You just did,” Calvin said, frowning.

Ella blinked at him.

“Now, you will go to sleep –“

“Or we will put you to sleep.” Every one of his dozen bodies spoke at once.

“Okay,” Ella nodded, glancing toward the box full of Bent potions. “Maybe I can get a couple more-“

Calvin was forced to drag Ella to bed and put a guard on her, wasting one of his valuable bodies.

The remaining eleven Calvins looked at each other, silently conversing with each other through their thoughts.

Alright, the three closest to the lab are responsible for figuring out a way to make our body permanent. The rest of us are going to find out who took Kala and fucking murder him. We all agreed?

The three closest to the lab had reservations.

Save a piece for us. They deeply wanted in on the murdering, but understood the need for someone to find a way out of their current predicament.

Oh, he’s gonna be in pieces, alright… Calvin thought, his body’s eyes narrowing.

We’ve got eighteen days before this group expires. Let’s make the most of it.

***Tzen chu, Imperial Prince***

Ever since that day in the capital of Juntai, Tzen had difficulty sleeping. He was finally free from the Harbinger’s influence, but only the hopelessness of the war for succession waited for him at home.

Perhaps it would be better to fake my death and retire to the country, Tzen thought before immediately chastising himself for having such weak-willed thoughts. Imperial princes did not ‘give up’. They faced reality and charged forward fearlessly.

Hey. Hey kid!

Not hearing anything. Tzen thought, turning in his bed, doing his absolute best to deny reality.

I need you to go to the nearest Siphon and file a F-U-B-A-R form. There’s some dubious shit going down on this planet, and the fleet need to catch wind of it before it bites us in the ass. Greshna is alive! He’s alive, I say!