Callie's Heroes

PART II - A VERY LATE NIGHT

“About five kilometers or so!” the rider called out as he charged quickly through the gate on his curvax. “They were at six when I ran ahead. Six carriages in total.” He then looked at the nervous Herdmaster as he dismounted. “Each with a team of two korrox, so a total of twelve.”

“Does that include the supply cart?”

“Apologies for my omission, it does not. So sixteen korrox total including our team of four.”

Nodding, the Herdmaster took the curvax from the rider, turned and walked off, presumably to make appropriate preparations in the stables.

“Alright,” Legate Galin called out, adding a sharp whistle and circling a finger several times in the air. “I want everyone here within thirty minutes. Ring the bell, clear the way, and make it happen. Someone go get the recruits down here and into ranks, or whatever they may actually call it after that dreadful practice this morning. Let’s at least try to pretend we have some semblance of organization around here.” He gestured up towards the lookout above the gate. “Sound the horn at one kilometer.”

“Yes, sir!” came the return call from above.

“You enjoy doing that, don’t you,” Celeste smirked as everyone lept into action.

“Well, I don’t get to do it often here, so I have to find what simple joys I can,” the Legate replied with a growl. “And you really could call me ‘Sir’ for the duration, you know. At least to put on a show while they’re all here.”

“I could,” Celeste laughed, “but we’re both Platinum as of this morning, so we know that isn’t likely to happen.” She couldn’t help but catch the subtle return smirk on her superior’s face. Then she added a calming, “Don’t worry, I’ll behave.”

“Congratulations again on that, Major, truly.” The legate sighed. “I’ve spent far, far too many years in command. If I have any hope of beating you to Topaz, I need to get back into the field, and maybe take on a few Elementals of my own. Have you told Thorn yet?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“He’ll want an accounting of that strange melded skill you received. What was it called again?”

“It’s called Decoy Target. I haven't tried it yet, but supposedly it summons some kind of an object that then emits a Taunt, and can absorb some of the resulting attacks. It’s rather odd, and I’ve decided to blame Callie and her little tribe of odd for that. And just to add to the odd, I also received several perks and skills at Iron tier, four of them in fact, including a pain blocking skill usable only on myself. Didn’t Thorn get a few off-class skills when he got Topaz?”

“Two or three of them, as well as a melded perk. Interesting. If you’d be willing, I’d like to spar sometime, and see that Decoy skill in action directly.”

“Two high-tier Guardian classes sparring? We could be at it all week.” She grinned. “I’ll look forward to it.” Turning from the Legate, the Major began to point and shout at the various soldiers, getting everyone where they needed to be and adding any final instructions.

Callie leaned back, resting against the next row of bleacher seats as she yawned loudly. She was exhausted, and it no doubt showed on her face even without the gaping maw.

“How late were you up?” Lena asked, unpacking her lunch bundle as she sat. “I got to bed late and you still weren’t back yet, or at least I didn’t see your boots.”

“I have no idea. I’d guess it was close to one or two, maybe even three.” Callie said, shrugging as she looked at the not-very-appetizing sandwich she was holding. She offered it to Jesca, who nodded heartily in thanks. “I just had a simple question for Thorn and it became almost four hours of discussion on a problem they were trying to solve, with Xera sitting in. Plus, to top it off, in the end we circled back to the original idea I had after five minutes anyway.”

“Anything the matter?”

Callie shook her head. “They both asked me not to talk about it, but I think we came up with a workable solution.” She looked up at Lena. “Did you make Silver? You haven’t mentioned it, so I’m assuming not, but I honestly could have slept through you telling me.”

Lena shook her head. “Close. I was 992 when I woke up. I should get it tomorrow. The Major finally got Platinum this morning, though!”

“Whoa! Cool! Good for her,” Callie cheered. “We’ll need to add her to the celebration list.”

Jesca nodded, making a mental note to update the festivities, before exclaiming, “Ow!” She glowered at Iris, who was sitting on her shoulder, a low growl coming from her chest. The Drakeling made another lunge towards the food in her hand. “Stop that! If you want something, then ask nicely.” There was a pause, followed by, “That’s better.” The Beastmaster tore off a bite-sized piece of the sandwich and offered it to the drakeling. Iris then rippled her wings in a rainbow pattern to show her happiness as she chomped the morsel down.

“She’s really cute,” Lena said. “Sharp teeth, though.”

“And claws!” Jesca added, gesturing to where Iris was dug into her armor.

Yawning again, Callie continued. “Well you may have gotten points, but my Symbiote wanted to talk to me again last night. So, apparently between being up so late and then chatting away inside my own head, I didn’t get any of my own points this morning when I woke up. So I’m still only at SILVER.022.”

“Your Symbiote? Again?” Lena asked. “I thought it would only talk to you when you got a new tier.”

“Before last night that was true, but when I hit Silver I asked him to talk again in a couple days, so we could plan out my skills after I had some time to think. Apparently, last night was the night.” Callie then remembered the internal demand to chat she made the evening before, and she wondered if that had something to do with it happening. That might be an experiment worth repeating.

While she’d already explained the process to Jesca, Lena’s confused expression forced Callie to detail out for her how the worms made magic. This eventually led to the choice she was forced to make between going for Gold or additional skills and perks.

“I don’t know,” Lena said slowly. “I think I might have chosen to focus on reaching Gold, given the choice. As a Guardian class, I need to be as good at my role as possible, otherwise people get hurt or killed. At least the two of you stand back out of harm’s way.”

“I would, too,” Jesca added. “I already have all these extra powers from Beastmaster, so I’d rather be stronger. Of course, you have your crazy layering thing to increase your damage, as well as those walking shooting things, so you’ll still be effective even at Silver.”

“That was why I wanted to talk to Thorn last night. I’ve been second-guessing if I made the right choice, so I wanted his opinion. Then we got distracted by the other thing, and now that I think about it, he never actually gave me a response. Nor did the Commandant, for that matter. Well, it’s too late now, I guess.”

By the time Callie had stumbled out of the Commandant’s office, it was certainly well into the dark morning hours. She’d spent several hours alternating between playing a game of Twenty Questions regarding her Symbiote and how it made magic, most of which she had no answer for, and working on the logistical problems the camp was having. It was exhausting, especially since both officers kept asking the same questions in several different ways. Having spent almost three hours before that working on her introduction to Sigil magic just compounded that exhaustion.

As for the camp’s issue, Thorn had revealed that the camp didn’t have nearly enough advanced-class Symbiotes to support a full count of recruits for the next session. The Army had agents out and about in the world trying to buy up any that might come on the markets, but the ready supply had been generally exhausted and the rate of new ones becoming available simply wasn’t that high. On top of that, they’d need up to a month to get whatever was ultimately procured to the camp, as well as let the interview teams, or what they called ‘recruiters’, know how many of what classes to find from the Conscript ranks.

Callie actually found it an interesting logistical problem to solve, even though the problem was simply the lack of supply. There were really only three ways to deal with that. Either you increase supply, reduce demand, or as a variation on that, change the requirements. Reducing demand was the easiest to do, of course, but that sort of defeated the whole purpose. As for how to increase supply, there weren’t a lot of options there either. Essentially, since the results of finding a worm were random, you needed to either increase the number of active worm hunters, or increase their chances of success. No matter the solution, in the end there was a very small window of time to do it, in a world with significant travel delays.

As Thorn detailed out the problem, specifically that he wanted to have the full number of recruits here, Callie’s first thought was to simply start training non-advanced classes with a Symbiote. This was Thorn’s thought as well, which he’d immediately concluded before even asking for Callie’s input. Xera didn’t like it, though, since the whole reason for the camp was to focus only on the advanced classes. Thus began an exhausting marathon of throwing out every possible scenario they could think of that might address the problem.

The solutions considered over the long discussion varied widely. Some were fairly simple and easy to implement, such as increasing what would be paid in an attempt to get more hunters in the field, and even possibly enticing retired ones to return to action. As the evening went on, though, the ideas became more and more wild, including Conscripting Dryads and assigning a team to each to clean out all the little worms in their domains. This was potentially dangerous, as Dryads didn’t generally appreciate others being around; most were not as friendly as Juniper was. It also would assuredly let the secret get out, too. Callie could hear a tinge of frustration growing in Xera’s voice as each option considered grew more and more outlandish or desperate, before finally being discounted.

In the end, they circled back to where Thorn and Callie had started, with simply filling in the ranks with high-quality standard-class recruits. Once that was grudgingly agreed to by Xera, the decision was made to focus specifically on Warrior recruits, as their training could integrate fairly easily into the ranks of Berzerkers, Barbarians, Paladins and Bladedancers, given a lot of overlap in their powers or styles of fighting. Thorn was also hopeful that those Warriors would be able to learn some of those advanced powers, possibly creating pseudo advanced classes as a result. Xera didn’t like the experimental nature of Thorn’s thinking, but conceded there wasn’t much other choice if they wanted enough recruit bodies.

By the time she had finally made it back home, Callie simply needed to sleep. Almost in a zombie-like daze of exhaustion, she shuffled down to her underwear and into the blanket fort turned double-sized bed. Pixyl had already been asleep, and stirred slightly as Callie removed her top and got comfortable, seeming to instinctively curl up against Callie’s back as the big spoon. Pixyl made a few tentative explorations with her fingers, but Callie was just too tired for any hanky or panky, and with a quick apology for that, they both passed out.

“So what did you and your worm decide to do about new perks and skills?” Jesca asked, tossing another torn off piece of her sandwich into the air for Iris. “Some kind of a way to blow up castles or something?”

“She could probably do a fair bit of that already,” Lena laughed.

Callie shook her head, stifling another yawn, too tired to even laugh at Jesca’s suggestion or Lena’s retort. “No, nothing like that. I think we both agreed that I have a good variety of ranged offensive skills. Where I’m lacking is defensive things. I mean, you get Dodge, Parry and Block, for example, while Rangers only get Instinctive Dodge. We also don’t have any sword skills, outside of the base perk with it, so no special attacks or anything.”

Lena made a considering face and then nodded in agreement. “Your small size might make something like an Instinctive Block or even Parry poorly effective, but I do see what you’re saying. Pixyl has a block skill with her shield, though, so maybe that could still work for you.”

Callie returned the nod. “Speaking of my small size, that was another thing we discussed. I don’t have a Dash or Flashstep like you two, or really any kind of a movement skill. It would be nice to have something to help me get around easier, especially to reposition during a fight, since my legs are so short. Flashstep would actually be pretty cool and useful.”

“If you do end up with something like that, make sure you’re really careful due to your size,” Lena warned, a tiny bit of a motherly tone in her voice. “Pixyl could have been hurt a lot worse when she hit that door. I’m surprised she wasn’t, truthfully, as small as she is. Flashstepping blindly into something solid can actually kill you if you aren’t careful. If that something is a person, it could kill you both, in fact. Pixyl’s really lucky.”

When Callie had first been introduced to the Flashstep skill, seeing Lena and the other Bladedancers using it during training to zip around the field, she had assumed it was a type of teleportation. It turned out, though, the caster actually traversed the distance, but it simply happened so fast as to seem instantaneous. Part of learning to use it went to making sure nothing was along the path you would travel, as much as controlling the exit point and the disorientation that came with it while learning. Lena had largely mastered the skill before arriving through years of trial and error, but the other Bladedancer students still had to work to reach a decent level of expertise.

“He said he wanted to come up with something interesting,” Callie said, shrugging. “I think he likes being a little creative, if he’s able.”

“He? Aren’t they asexual?” Lena asked.

“Well, yeah. At least that’s how they reproduce, according to Vanis. But despite that, he just feels masculine to me for some reason, and I don’t like using ‘it’. So I’m going with ‘he’ while I try to come up with a good name,”

“Another Gnome god?” Jesca asked, scritching Iris under her chin as the drakeling rippled more contented rainbow colors.

“Maybe, if I can think of the right one. I don’t know the male ones as well, though, and my head is sort of jelly right now.” Callie tilted her head as if thinking. “I dunno, I’ll come up with something interesting.” She vaguely recalled a Greek god of dreams or something like that, but she couldn’t remember his name and wanted to see if it came to her. That mythology class in college understandably didn’t spend a lot of time on the male members of the pantheon, except mentions in passing.

Iris made a sudden low chirping noise and seemed to tense. Raising her tail in the air, the end fanned out and began to glow with bright, red and yellow colors, while her eyes were fixated on something.

“What is it?” Lena asked, sliding away from Iris slightly on her seat, while looking in the same direction as the drakeling, also tensing a bit as her Guardian instincts kicked in.

The eyes of the rippling Companion glowed brightly for a moment and suddenly a smoking something fell from the air. It was a bee. A big, fat one in fact, almost as big as the drakeling’s head. The bee landed with a bouncing thump on one of the seats and Iris leapt from Jesca’s shoulder, pouncing on the morsel. She stared at it, using her eyes to cut it in half and seeming to cook it a bit, before gobbling down each chunk in two bites. Looking back at the curious and slightly horrified expressions of the others, Iris seemed to grin, rippling her tail in a warm, blue and green contented pattern.

“Dessert, apparently,” Jesca finally said, clearing her throat nervously.

“Frickin’ laser beam eyes,” Callie chuckled.