Chapter 151: Inked

While Calvin’s adoptive mother was busily scarring people for life, Calvin got busy making the ink, recalling the briefing on Genosian Tattoo rituals.

“In a Genosian bonding ritual,” Ella had said, “The man chooses the ink and the pattern. The woman chooses the size and location. During the tattooing, the man must remain still and suffer through wherever his prospective mate chooses to apply it.”

“So you could put it on my face if you wanted to?” Calvin asked, hesitantly.

“Yes. Actually, many women who aren’t particularly enthusiastic about getting married choose a large tattoo covering the face, eyeballs, or scrotum. Then if the man is able to sit through the whole process, everyone can at least agree that he earned it.”

“You’re not going to tattoo my face, eyes or scrotum, are you?” Calvin asked.

“You’ll just have to trust me,” Ella said sweetly, her sharp teeth creating a jagged smile.

“The other role that the size of a tattoo plays is symbolic.” Ella continued. “If a woman covers most of a man’s skin with the symbol he’s chosen for her, that’s somewhat indicative of how possessive she is over him, and how likely she is to accept other tattoos besides her own.”

“How does that work?” Calvin

“I once saw a man from the Bounder tribe whose first wife covered every square inch of his body. Other women knew to stay away from him. Because if she could stomach doing that to her mate, what would she be capable of doing to another woman?”

“Poor guy.” Calvin muttered.

“Not being able to sleep around?” Kala asked, with a raised brow.

“Getting poked with needles every day for what had to be years.”

Kala slammed her hand down on the table. “I want in on this.”

“What?”

“Please?” Kala said, looking up at Ella with misty eyes.

“Why are you asking her?” Calvin demanded. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

“I can’t say no to that face,” Ella said, picking up the princess and setting the slender girl on her lap.”

You can’t say no to that face because I can’t say no to that face, damnit.

The effect of the Guya was strong as ever for Ella, and Kala hadn’t divulged whether she’d been affected. Calvin was pretty sure she had.

For Calvin though, the Guya had taken a much less intrusive role in his mind, allowing his actual thoughts and feeling to take the reigns of his behavior rather than forcing him. Overall the effect was more muted, but much less worrisome.

And Calvin didn’t know if it had changed anything about his feelings for Kala. He already would have murdered people for her, so he didn’t really feel that much different.

“You’ve already consummated with Kala, so by Genosian tribal law you owe her a tattoo to symbolize your union.” Ella said, petting Kala as she spoke.

The princess seemed to purr and melt into the genosian’s lap.

Calvin tapped his fingers and peered at them warily. They were teaming up against him, and it was at once amazing and horrible, to be constantly outnumbered and outvoted.

He could bring up the fact that neither he nor Kala were Genosian nor were they bound by genosian tribal law.

“Sorry, Neither of us are bound by –“

“Once you have a Bond tattoo from me, you are considered part of the tribe, and therefore an adulterer if Kala isn’t included.”

“This is ridiculous.” Calvin said, holding up his hand with the wedding ring. “If symbolism is all that’s needed, this is plenty, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Calvin, I wouldn’t want you to be visited by Genosian dignitaries one day and have them think you’re an adulterer.”

“That’s –“

“I guess I can just stop having sex with him altogether. That should prevent any misunderstandings.” Kala said, tearfully.

“Now, now, don’t cry,” Ella said, wiping away Kala’s tears. I’d be more than happy to warm your–“

“Fine.” Calvin said, throwing up his hands, “I should have just given up at the beginning.”

“Probably,” Kala said, wiping away her crocodile tears.

“Make sure you choose a different pattern for both of us,” Ella said. “It’s bad form to give two mates the same pattern.”

“Fine,” Calvin said, rubbing his temples. This was worse than getting married in Gadvera, but there was nothing to do but power through it.

“So how are our tattoos going to fit together?” Kala asked, looking up at the shark-toothed girl while sitting in her lap.

“We won’t know until he gives us the patterns, but we need to at least take up a significant portion of his back, to make sure others get the message that he’s taken.”

“True,” Kala said, glancing back down at Calvin with narrowed eyes. “He does have a nasty habit of collecting young women.”

“Since when!?” Calvin demanded, pointing at Ella.

“She wasn’t my fault, and I don’t even like Nadia. I made her a Chained spirit for information on Iletha and nothing else.”

Calvin’s lovers watched him with narrowed eyes and disbelieving frowns.

“You seem to have an awful lot of fun tormenting her,” Kala said airly.

Calvin glanced out of the tent where Nadia had been tied to a pole and forced to catch rain drops in her mouth overnight. The leather-clad princess glared back at him with a furious blush in her cheeks.

“That’s just maintenance.” Calvin said with a shrug. “She gets unruly if you don’t humiliate her a couple times a week.”

“Uh-huh. You sure are creative with your punishments.”

“You know what, I don’t have to take this!” Calvin said, standing. “I’m gonna go have breakfast.”

Calvin marched out of his own tent, the sound of giggling following him out onto the beaten dirt outside.

He wasn’t particularly mad, and they weren’t particularly conspiring against him: It was just fun to go through the motions.

***

“And then I went and got the powders I needed, then set up my lab, and here we are,” Calvin said, glancing over at Nadia.

“Aaaaah” She said around the funnel in her mouth.

“Now, I realized that I’m going to have to test these tattoos on someone to make sure I get their effects right. And I thought to myself, whose skin could I mess with a little without it being permanent?”

“Uuaahe.” Nadia said.

“Kurawe is a good answer, and while he’d probably be happy to go through a little pain to help me out, I need someone with younger skin.”

Nadia rolled her eyes.

“Let’s get started.”

Calvin took a drop of blood from Kala and Ella, filled a jar using undifferentiated mass, then spent the next few hours going through trial and error, trying to find the perfect mixture and perfect process to get the type of ink that he wanted.

Sometimes it picked up Kala and Ella’s feelings, but the ink didn’t show on the skin, other times the reverse, sometimes nothing happened, sometimes it seemed to cause a painful mental feedback.

After two hours and the thirteenth batch, Calvin was ready for a change of plans, and Elliot had a suggestion.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Back when we were fishing for monsters, your fishing skill applied to the Knick-knacks. You think Abyssal Alchemy would work here, if you were in charge of them? Elliot asked.

More hands, huh? Calvin asked, thinking. That could work.

Chained Spirit

Chained Spirit

Chained Spirit

Chained Spirit

Chained Spirit

Calvin summoned an even dozen Nadias, creating a much larger testing sample.

Chained Spirit has reached level 25!

+1 Will

Please Choose an Ability or Mutation

Abilities:

Bent: The Chained Spirit gains a limited pool to draw from to fuel Abilities. The effects of the abilities are extentions of Chained Spirit and not actual Bent. Pool is 1/5th the level of Chained Spirit.

Chimera: The user may rearrange parts from any slotted creature onto any other slotted creature in any combination.

Extended Summoning: Time limit is increased by (Sta)%

Hijack: At will, user may fall into a meditative state to control the body of a chained Spirit. All senses of primary body are cut off for the duration.

^Make sure you left yourself somewhere safe. From Chained minds.

Slanted Negotiations: User may sacrifice two Bent to allow a chained spirit to spend one without needing to manifest a physical form. The origin of the effect is the user. The Bent, once given to the Chained spirit, is out of the User’s control.

Mutations:

Voodoo U: Damage taken by caster is absorbed by Chained spirit instead.

Walk a mile in her heels: User’s body may be subsumed by the Chained spirit Spell, allowing them to become the Chained Spirit at the moment of casting. User may exercise complete control over the Chained spirit, give instructions, or simply allow it to do as it wishes.

^from Heart of the Swarm.

Heirloom Spirit: User’s Chained spirits are duplicated and given to User’s most direct descendants upon user’s death.

*no eating required!

Calvin briefly scanned the options, then chose Chimera. The only ones that competed with the utility of Chimera were Extended summon and Voodoo U, and Calvin already was planning on making some adjustments to Nadia’s form as necessary.

Giving Nadia Bent was, of course, totally out of the question until Calvin was absolutely sure she couldn’t screw him over somehow, and then even after that.

Slanted negotiations was interesting in that it gave him limited access to Nadia’s abilities in an emergency situation. As long as he put her in a situation where she had to cast the spell he wanted or they might die, it would work out just fine.

Except that sounded like a giant pain in the ass and a slippery slope towards giving Nadia free reign to do whatever she wanted.

So no, he chose Chimera.

Now that he had Chimera on both Chained Spirit and Calvinian Summoning, he could move parts back and forth between the two Abilities on the fly.

Let’s face it, you were planning on putting Nadia’s boobs on a wasp.

Is that the second time you’ve made that joke? Calvin thought as he summoned a swarm of Knick-knacks.

Ummm… maybe? Definitely not the first time I’ve thought of it.

Calvin rolled his eyes and duplicated the jars across a dozen different tables, lined with burners, filtered water, and fuel to boil each stage of the ink.

Each of the dozen Nadias was strapped down to the table, and then Calvin’s kncick-knacks got to work, mixing ingredients and communicating their findings with each other, then preparing new mixtures at a rate Calvin couldn’t even hope to match.

Abyssal Alchemy has reached level 13! 65% Correction.

There we go, Calvin thought, sitting back on one of the stump as the knick-knacks narrowed in on the perfect ink preparation.

It only took the knick-knacks another hour to come back to him with the ideal mixture, having tried more permutations of ingredients and preparation methods than he could have done in a week by himself.

They focused on the trait they could perceive first, that of the ink being visible, then expanded on any preparation method that resulted in a tangible result, asking Nadia to verify if she could feel emotions coming from the tattoo.

Knick-knacks weren’t particularly vocal, so they developed a wordless system where they would poke Nadia and she would tell them if she felt anything.

After three hours of work, Calvin finally had two jars of black ink ready to go, one keyed to Kala, the other to Ella.

“Wow, that was faster than I expected.” Ella said when Clavin proudly dropped the two jars of thick ink onto the table in front of them.

“Usually a man spends weeks harvesting blackroot and chewing it into a thick paste then rendering it down. This gives him time to come up with a pattern that matched his lover. Did you already have a pattern in mind for each of us, or are you just premature?”

“Am I…allowed to talk to you about what kind of pattern you’d like?” Calvin asked with a frown.

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Ella responded.

That was a weight off his mind. Calvin had no idea what they wanted.

“So what patterns do you two like?” Calvin asked.

“We’ve assembled a list of demands,” Ella said, passing him a stack of scribbles.

“Suggestions, Ella, Suggestions,” Kala chided.

The drawings ranged from intertwined geometric shapes to animals and simple pictures of the girls themselves.

“Any of these would be fine, but you’ve got to pick them.”

Calvin scanned through them, his eyes settling on the water lotus and Nektor beetle.

“These look good.” Calvin said, pointing them out.

“Really?” Kala asked with a frown.

Calvin was an instant away from reconsidering when he realized that they were just testing him. Thank you Intuition.

“Yes, those remind me of you.” Calvin said.

“Very well. We’ll get started on the tattoo tomorrow morning.” Ella glanced over at Kala. “First I’ve got to teach this soft city-dweller how to do proper Skin-art.”

Ella looked back at Calvin. “Can we borrow Nadia for a while?”

“Knock yourself out,” Calvin said, waving them out of the tent.