Wake of the Ravager

Perfection does not exist in a vacuum. There is no growth without pain, no victory without struggle. Always seek the ideal. Complacency leads to Stagnation, Stagnation leads to destruction. The Ravager scours away weakness. Such is their purpose since the System was first Designed.

***Elliot***

“Welcome to Richie Cool’s Bitchin’ Recharging Station!”

A man in a tacky T-shirt showing the sandy beaches of Marconen’s tropical islands stood behind the counter of the charging station, welcoming Elliot in with a bright smile. Ritchie, presumably.

Upon seeing Elliot’s face, the man’s professional smile slipped, just a little. He’d been on the Most Wanted list prior to the coup, so it was understandable.

Charging station might have been misleading, as the building itself was massive, with twin towers jutting miles up into the sky, allowing ships as big as Cruisers to dock between them and get juiced full of Warp for the trip to the nearest star systems, taking the fight to the Harbingers.

“What’s the profit margin on a place like this?” he asked as his ATHK-600’s filed in behind him, aiming for the bot charging hall on the left. He glanced around, noting the notches in the wall down the hall to the right, where weapons from the size of pistols to full blown miniguns could be placed to recharge, getting the energy they needed to penetrate Harbinger and Warped creature’s defences alike.

“Not the best, but it beats that, Ritchie Cool said, nodding at a group of hunters wearing leather from Warped monsters, and grisly trophies around their necks. Some of them were even using swords, claiming it was more cost-effective than buying recharges on weapons with Warp Engines, especially if they used Warp from a Break to enhance their skill with the length of steel.

Cost effective? Maybe. Stupid? Definitely.

It was easy to tell between the ones who were out hunting local Fauna that’d been mutated by the Warp lingering around the Siphons, and the ones who were taking the fight to the Harbingers: Mostly by the leather, horns, teeth and skulls decorating their clothes.

Glorified looters, Elliot thought with a scoff.

Humanity was rapidly retracting to a handful of heavily fortified safe havens on the coasts of Marconen as Warped creatures sprung up like weeds everywhere else. That left a lot of unclaimed property for those with more balls than sense to venture out and steal.

The thought about Warped creatures got him thinking. The last warped Creature he’d seen looked a bit like walking cyst with caterpillars for arms. The Mutations triggered by Warp were sudden, random, and violent, usually resulting in the creature’s death within a few hours of the event…

But sometimes things got bad. Especially if it used to be a human. Those monsters were clever.

Thankfully the System prevented most people from Mutating unless they were extremely negligent, so the human-base monsters were almost unheard of.

I wonder if the System could be persuaded to control the mutation?

Elliot reached into his wallet and pulled out his card.

“Whadda I owe ya for a hundred and sixteen medium size bots?”

“It’s on the house,” Ritchie said, gesturing for Elliot to take his card away as if it were radioactive.

“Ritchie. I’ve got a card that links directly to the government’s coffers. This isn’t my money, this is your tax money. Take the pay.”

Ritchie hesitated for a second. “A-alright.” He tapped his monitor a couple times. “That’ll be three hundred and forty-eight thousand.”

“WHAT!?” Elliot demanded, leaning over the table with a scowl, making the young proprieter of the recharging establishment scramble backward, landing on his butt.

“No, wait, that sounds right. Here you go.” Elliot said, grinning as he handed the card over the edge of the desk.

Ritchie climbed back to his feet, panting nervously as he took the card out of Elliot’s hand.

“W-Would you like to get them a buffing with that for an extra hundred points apiece?”

“That’s the spirit, Ritchie. Upsell me. Yes I would.” Nobody liked robots who weren’t presentable.

Ritchie nodded and bopped Elliot’s card to the panel, typed a moment, then handed it back.

“Recharging should take fifteen minutes. Feel free to grab a coffee while you wait.”

“I think I will.”

Elliot turned and walked around Doug, whose gaze followed him as he grabbed a cop and filled it from the dispenser.

“You want anything Doug? Coffee, cocoa, orange juice, coke, coke?”

Doug walked up next to him, glancing over at the sweating man behind the counter.

“You can’t do that anymore.” He said quietly.

“Do what?” Elliot asked, standing.

“Mess with people.”

“Why not?” Elliot asked as he took a sip from his coffee, staring the pudgy man down.

“Because you literally represent Marconen’s new government. When you mess with people, that’s the government messing with people.”

“Pfft, boring.” Elliot glanced over at Ritchie Cool glancing over at the two of them, nervously. Hmmm.

“Elliot, you got what you wanted. We’re an independent planet now, but you really gotta stop messing with people who have less money and power than you. It’s not fun for them.”

Elliot blinked.

“Oh, that’s why nobody likes my jokes. I could kill them if they didn’t. Kinda ruins the whole dynamic.”

“Pretty much.”

“UUUGh, I hate power dynamics. So how do I have friends again, search the internet for a dating site called Singleswholiberatedaplanet.com?”

“I’m your friend.”

“Yeah, but you’re Doug.”

Doug growled at punched him on the shoulder.

“Treason!”

Doug punched him on the shoulder again.

“You will be executed for this, rebel scum – ow, ow, it really hurts now, quit it.”

Doug raised another threatening fist, when the entire building began to shake.

“What’s that?”

Elliot walked up to the windows at the front of the lobby and glanced out.

Huh, it’s an armada. A Harbinger one.

The building was entirely surrounded by dozens of scab-colored Harbinger transport vessels, most likely containing their scab-colored footsoldiers, eager to be sent into the meatgrinder.

Elliot took a sip of his garbage truck-stop coffee.

“Ritchie, would you mind detaching and reactivating my ATHK’s? This is kind of an emergency.”

Elliot glanced over his shoulder, and saw…Doug behind the monitor, Ritchie cool nowhere to be seen.

“Doug. Same question.”

Doug hit a final button, and rather than the Clunk-hiss of his kill-robots being released, there was the  zap-Pop-Bang! of robots exploding from over-charging.

Elliot experienced the tiniest pang of betrayal. Like when you accidentally overcook your Burrito in the microwave. This is why I have trouble relating to people. That and my Intuition started two standard Deviations below average.

“E tu, Doug?”

“Sorry man, you’re just a little... too much.”

Doug jumped down one of the side halls with gusto, as if he expected Elliot to shoot at him as he flew, in a little action movie of his own. The emergency doors closed behind him a fraction of a second later, along with the other side door, leaving Elliot trapped in the lobby.

Elliot sighed and grabbed the sugar off the table next to him and dumped a bit in, stirring it in with Bent.

“Guess I should see what these asshats want.”

Elliot sauntered out into the parking lot, knocking back his coffee as he walked. The wind became a roaring gale as dozens of Harbinger ships settled down around him, their gates dropping open at the same time.

Elliot’s brows rose as humans marched out of the Harbinger ships, training pulse rifles on him as they crept forward like he was some kind of dangerous animal. In Elliot’s experience Humans and Harbingers didn’t exactly get along. Maybe Elliot had somehow inadvertently fostered peace between the warring nations, through his nuclear love-letters.

Elliot glanced down at his empty coffee cup; swished it around a bit.

Wish I had some more.

“Elliot Spencer.” A voice came from the back of the ship. Elliot glanced up and spotted Admiral Greyson. He looked older than the last time they’d met.

“’Sup?”

“Some friends of ours want to meet you. Put your fucking hands behind your head.”

Elliot did so, eager to see the surprise. He watched as men with Bent resistant riot shields coated in Mnematite crept forward, enclosing him in a circle. Land bound creatures tended to think in two dimensions.

Elliot slipped his Bent out through the soles of his feet and spread it through the earth, waiting for his command.

Elliot’s patience was rewarded when he spotted the oblong head of a Harbinger lope down the ramp, digitigrade feet giving a bobbing motion to its walk.

A dozen more of the reddish brown, mottled aliens with wide heads marched lazily down the ramp, parting the sea of humans with an invisible hand.

“This the one you’re looking for?” Greyson asked as they approached.

The lead Harbinger came straight up to Elliot and grabbed him by the chin. His gaze bored into Elliot’s eyes, and a splitting headache sprung up out of nowhere.

“Gah,” Elliot reeled backward and glapped a hand over his aching eyes and temples.

“Yes, this is a Ravager. You will be well rewarded for your assistance. Marconen is yours.”

“I don’t want Marconen,” Greyson said with a scowl as he glanced at the burning moon scowling down at them. “Without the Mnematite deposits on Soscath, this place is less than worthless to me.”

“We will come to a different arrangement then. It’s no bother to us should Marconen lay fallow, but we must take the Ravager into custody before it has a chance to grow stronger.”

“Why do you keep calling me a Ravager?” Elliot asked, taking his hand away from his head, the ache suddenly gone.

“You put your hands on the back of your head!” A nearby marine shouted, nudging Elliot’s skull with the barrel of his gun.

Elliot complied. Not gonna regret killing that guy.

“Pretty sure it means Pain In The Ass.” Greyson said.

The Harbinger laid a hand on Greyson’s shoulder.

“You do not need to know your sacred purpose to fulfill it, Ravager. It would be a waste of emotional effort for you to come to terms with your part in the System in the short time you have left before your soul is reassigned.”

Soul is reassigned? That sounds disturbingly similar to death. Elliot made a mental note to make a backup in case he couldn’t avoid this…soul-reassigning.

In any case, it was past time for him to make his move. Elliot pushed his Bent up through the ground.

Life Drain.

46/47 Bent remaining.

The Bent leapt up and sucked the vital energy out of each and every one of the people around him, adding it to an invisible reservoir he could only feel in the back of his mind.

The humans around him slumped to the ground in death, while the Harbingers simply watched him quizzically.

Biomancy has reached level 27!

Yaaay! Elliot would have clapped his hands in joy, but he was busy.

Fly.

45/47 Bent remaining.

Elliot rose up above the Harbingers and aimed downward.

Annihilation.

30/47 Bent remaining.

The parking lot blinked out of existance, along with the Harbinger ships, a bit of the recharging station, as well as a few miles of bedrock beneath it.

The Harbingers appeared in a circle around him, their hands held out.

Friggin’ teleporters.

Elliot only had a moment to complain before a raw cage of electricity slammed shut around him, electrocuting every fiber of his body as he was suspended in midair. It hurt, sure, but…

Your Stability has shrugged off the effects. Your Will has begun digesting the foreign Bent, ETA 2 seconds.

Elliot forced his way through the cage of lightning, suffering hideous burns across his entire body as he did.

He could feel the reservoir of energy drop a little as his body repaired itself, using the energy they’d been kind enough to bring him. The pain of forcing his way through the lightning was worth seeing the endlessly arrogant bastard’s eyes widen with surprise.

“That the best you weaklings can do?” he asked, forming layers of offensive and defensive Bent around himself.

Then they did something he wasn’t expecting.

Three of the red-brown aliens pulled knives out of their belts and stabbed them deep into their own chests, their eyes rolling back in their heads as they died in seconds.

“What the…”

“We are anything but weak, Ravager.” Their leader said with narrowed eyes.

What the hell are they thinking? Elliot thought, keeping his defenses up and his head on a swivel. They didn’t do anything. Far beneath them the gaping hole in the earth’s crust began to glow as magma made its way to the surface.

Whoops, I accidentally volcano’ed.

Wait, this could be good. In a minute or two, it’ll shoot straight up into the air, and I’ll use the distraction to fuck off.

When he felt the sweat beading on his forehead, he knew they’d already gotten him.

Oh, goddamnit, he thought as his eyes rolled back in his head.

Warp overflow detected.

The roar of lava exploding out of the gaping hole in Marconen’s crust dimmed as Elliot lost consciousness.

***Calvin***

Calvin raised a hand to knock on the general’s door.

“Come in,” Andra said before he’d even had a chance to put knuckle to wood.

Calvin shrugged and opened the door, walking into the warmly lit office.

The first thing he noticed was Andra wearing something other than full plate, looming over a map in a dress.

It didn’t match her aesthetic a bit.

The second thing he noticed was the gaze directed at him from the corner of the room.

Calvin glanced out of the corner of his eye, but couldn’t see any sign of a person. The gaze didn’t feel immediately hostile, simply dispassionate and a little bored. He could feel their presense with his skin, though, an unexplained lump in the corner of the room.

Is she being spied on, or am I?

“You called?”

“I did,” she said, straightening from the map to look into his eyes. “Take a seat.”

Calvin pulled out a chair and sat. on the desk in front of him, the map showed Gadvera on its horn of land, flanked by Iletha to the northeast and the great jungle to the southeast. There was a dotted line that went straight east, beneath the mountains that divided Iletha and Gadvera, skirted the great jungle for a hundred miles before it plunged into a desert with ‘Uleis’ written on it.

To the northwest was Malkenrovia, with dozens of tiny isles in between.

“Time for a geopolitical lesson,” She said, folding her poofy dress to sit in front of him.

Elliot groaned in the back of his head, his voice growing distant, followed by the sound of clinking glass.

“Can I ask about the dress?” Calvin asked.

“I’m going to a ball in an hour. No, you can’t come too.”

Calvin shut his mouth, his follow-up question dead on arrival.

“Now shut up and pay attention. This is Gadvera and Iletha. We share a similar stretch of land, with access to the Vern ocean. The Ilethan mountains are rich in resources, and for four hundred years, Iletha was the dominant military power on the continent.”

“Until Koth Sendan lead pioneers from the deserts of Uleis, traveled south beneath the ilethan mountains, and established Mujenan.”

“Once it was proven that a land route was viable, Uleis annexed Mujenan and began shipping its own goods and those acquired from the Boles empire to Malkenrovia, bypassing Iletha entirely.

“I imagine Iletha didn’t like that.”

“You imagine correctly. Iletha tried to invade Uleis, but their attempts to attack the desert country always ended in disaster.”

At this, she met Calvin’s eyes. “No one can win a major land war against Uleis on their home turf.”

“Understood.”

“Fifteen years into this conflict, when both countries were exhausted from fighting each other, Koth Sendan led a rebellion against Uleis. Mujenan and the surrounding port cities were tired of having their wealth stolen from them by the oppressive taxes levied by the desert nation.”

“And we got creamed?”

Andra shook her head. “Taking a page from Uleis’s own book, our young men who’d grown up near the Great Jungle lured the Uleis into our home turf and destroyed them.

She cocked her head as she studied the map. “I heard from my grandfather that most of them succumbed to foot-rot.”

“Eww.”

Andra ignored his comment.

“How do you think these three countries see each other?” she asked, circling the three of them.

“Grudging acceptance?”

“Correct. We are not friends, but we do business. Uleis is the linchpin in the trade network between the east and the west, through their connection to Boles. Soon after Gadvera declared independence, they realized they could play Iletha and Gadvera off of each other, offering better deals to the highest bidder; get their taxes that way.”

She scowled, pausing for a moment.

“We need their help. We’re going to send a party to negotiate for their assistance in this war. Like it or not, Gadverans are blood related to Uleisians, and share a similar culture. If we can get past the ancient grudges, it should be simple to secure a political advantage over Iletha.”

Calvin frowned. “Am I a diplomat now?”

Andra gave a half chuckle. “Gods no. You have all the tact of a horny guar. You and the First Mujenan volunteers will be bodyguards.”

“Whose body will I be guarding?”

“Princess Kala’s. She will be the diplomat.”

“I can get behind that.” Calvin said with a nod.

Nice one.

Andra’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t get complacent. You had a good result on your last mission, but you took a lot of risks that could have cost you everything.”

Calvin felt the invisible man in the corner of the room tense up, anticipating something.

I’ve seen that kind of risky decision-making before, and it got people killed. You might think you’re invincible, but I’m here to tell you that you’re not. You are mortal, like everyone else. You can be caught off guard, and you can be hurt.”

Don’t dodge. This is supposed to be a lesson in humility. I’d rather she didn’t know you know, you know?

Fine, but if he aims for my head, I’m killing him.

On que, the lurker snuck up behind him and put a blunt blade shaped object around his neck. When it got closer to his skin, he could feel it’s spongeyness, allowing him to relax

The sponge was drawn across his throat with a quick yank, depositing a gush of blood on his neck before he was kicked aside.

Above him, a slender man turned visible, blood dripping from a fake knife.

Such pageantry.

Obligingly, Calvin clapped his hand over his bloody neck for a moment, panting wide-eyed to give his audience the idea that he’d truly been scared by the attack.

He made a show of pulling his hand away, finding his neck unharmed.

“See?” Andra asked. “You’ve a long way to go before you can relax. You’re still a beginner. Remember that.”

“If I suck so much,” Calvin asked, climbing to his feet while glancing around the room. “Why send me with Kala?”

“The Uleis will try to pressure her into marrying one of their heirs in exchange for their assistance, or possibly attempt a kidnapping and forced wedding. Gadvera would then once again become a vassal state of Uleis, which is why I can’t allow that to happen.”

Andra regarded him with a slow smile.

“I feel that you, out of all the captains I could send, are the most motivated to prevent that from happening.”

“Yes…Yes I am. They can have Kala over their dead bodies.” Kala was instrumental in usurping the kingdom. That and he liked her a lot.

He glanced up. “You have any soap?”

Andra glanced over to a box on the shelf. “Go find your own.”

“No need.”

Mass Multi Shaping.

14/15 Bent remaining.

Calvin isolated the box she’d looked at, a tiny bowl-shaped bit of the crystal from Andra’s goblet, the water from the decanter on her desk, and a sliver of velvet from her dress,

Two dark blue velvet towels, along with a crystal bowl full of water, appeared next to the box, on the center of her desk.

Calvin opened the box and found a piece of fancy scented soap. He dipped the first towel in the water and lathered on the soap before he began washing the blood off his neck.

“Was there anything else you wanted to tell me?”

“Yeah, watch the attitude, and get that shit off my desk.”

“Will do, ma’am.” Calvin said, giving a textbook salute before dismissing the spell.

The bowl and the towels vanished. The dried blood on his neck and collar that had bonded to the soap turned into a rust-colored dust and drifted to her floor as he left.

I’m liking that Multi-split. That stunt would have taken you four Bent otherwise. Elliot spoke to him as he left Andra’s office.

I’m aware.

We should get you the Drafting skill, or maybe Tinkering, or Chemisty, or all of the above.

Why’s that?

Sufficiently complex objects are going to be really hard to do off the top of your head. a bowl and a couple towels? Easy. A pocketwatch or a submachine gun? That’s gonna be tricky to visualize properly without help.

I don’t know what either of those things are.

It’s cool, we’ve got time.

“I’ve only got a handful of empty skill slots left. Why should I get Drafting?”

You see that suit of armor of there?

Calvin spotted one at the end of the hall. One of the uses he’d had in mind for Multi-Split, actually.

Make one out of Jerrytanium.

Easy enough, Calvin thought, placing his thumb on the marble he’d studded into his belt. He closed his eyes and concentrated, aiming to suit himself in armor.

No, not on yourself, god! Do you wanna die!?”

Calvin blinked, then decided to make the armor on something else.

Multi Shaping.

13/15 Bent remaining.

The armor appeared, standing in front of him, perfectly balanced and able to stand on its own.

Calvin was pretty proud of himself until he noticed the huge swath of chest piece that was missing, along with the section of leg that was tilted by about thirty-five degrees in a place that had no business being tilted.

One of the arms fell off, Calvin having forgotten to imagine joint-bolts for it. The shift in weight…did nothing. The rest of the joint-bolts were so improperly fitted that the entire piece of armor was incapable of moving. It wasn’t perfectly balanced, it was frozen.

“You’ve made your point.” Calvin said aloud, dismissing the spell.

Not a bad result for a first try, actually, I expected it to look glitched as fuck. I imagine with a little bit of practice you could do a suit of armor on the first try every time. By the way, can we rename Multi-shaping to Fabricate? No particular reason.

Practice, huh? Any reason we couldn’t use Shadow-boxing to get the technique down?

Not at all, but a Crafting Skill of some kind would synergize very well with Dupdomancy, as it stands.

Noted.

Macronomicon

29/30

I was able to get enough done that Patreon is at Chapter 88! One more than my guess two weeks ago.

Enjoy! I'll be resuming a normal schedule, so expect one chapter Thursday and Friday too.