NINETY-EIGHT: Blossoming Tentacles (Patreon)

[A/N: Three things today!

1. The chapter number skip is because I have changed the way a couple of chapters are numbered in the upcoming posts for Royal Road. This way we should match up again.

2. Remember back in the olden days when we hand wrote papers for our teachers and we had to underline text that would be italicized if typed? I went with that for this chapter. It's because italics are now Even More broken. Which is impressive. I can no longer see them on any web browser on my laptop, so I'm assuming even more of you are having trouble with it than before, too. I mean for this to help everyone out, but if you hate the underlining, the attached ePub is formatted correctly as always.

3. I will be posting a new ePub file full of the revisions I've made to chapters 81-88 in an hour or two. There are largish chunks of new material in chapters 81 and 83 (going by the new chapter numbers in that document). If you hate backtracking, you'll be just fine not diving into it, but it is fun reading in my opinion. Particularly the material in 83. So maybe if you decide to re-read just start at the beginning and go through 83? Only minor edits outside of those two chapters... More on that in the upcoming post. I just wanted to let you all know in advance what was happening.

All right! That's it for the announcements! I present to you: Chapter 98, Blossoming Tentacles.


***********

“You’re all idiots.”

Lexi Roberts—smug bastard—said this while examining Alden, Lute, and Haoyu on Monday morning. It was 6:45, he’d just come in from a run, and he looked disgustingly energized standing there drinking an iced black coffee from the campus shop.

“I got up at two o’clock to use the bathroom, and none of you were here.”

“Kon and Mehdi’s group decided to go all the way down to the stadium in F,” Haoyu groaned while he trudged across the kitchen toward his slow-cooker. “To see a spell performance. It took a couple of hours to get back through all the traffic. I regret it.”

“I regret nothing,” Lute mumbled into the top of the dark wood table that they’d chosen to match their huntski lodge theme. “I was eating mochi in a tub surrounded by beautiful, friendly Rabbit girls when the volley ended at one.”

“Were you?” Haoyu asked.

“Of course he wasn’t,” Lexi scoffed, rolling his eyes.

Without looking up, Lute pointed across the table at Alden, who was trying to will himself awake while he chewed on a vegan protein bar the North of North gym recommended. It was supposed to taste like cookie dough.

I wonder if whoever made this has actually eaten cookie dough, or if it’s just a phrase they’ve heard people with tastebuds say before.

He swallowed the chalky, artificially sweetened monstrosity. “He was in the tub. We calculated it at one point, and he spent almost five hours yesterday in tubs. He’s the cleanest person on campus.”

“Alden’s intake friends are excellent. I’ve changed my vote about letting guests come over if those are the guests.”

“Oh no,” said Haoyu, staring into his slow cooker at the oatmeal he’d put in last night. “I don’t think this is right.”

He dug a spoon into it, and when he lifted it, an oatmeal and dried fruit disc came out. “I think I need to add more water.”

It slid off the spoon and hit the counter.

“Did that just bounce?” Lexi asked, blinking at it.

Alden nodded. “That was a definite bounce.”

******

Maricel was already in the lecture theater by the time Alden made it to Preparatory Sciences, and when he went over to sit with her, he was relieved that she seemed at ease. They talked about homework until Finlay arrived and turned the conversation to their upcoming gym class.

“Whatever we do, I want to make a proper show of it for the instructors,” he said, ripping open creamers and sugar packets and pouring them into a hot tea. “You know? I don’t want them to think, Och, we made a mistake with that one! He’s not quality material.”

“Something tells me you won’t have that problem,” said Alden.

“You never can be sure. At the party, when I told Mehdi I was in this course, he said it was for the ‘remedial students.’ Did you two know that?”

“Yes,” Alden and Maricel both said.

“What’s that about? I never was a remedial student before. Not top of my class, but never the bottom either. Well…I suppose we’re not the worst of them. They didn’t even give Jeffy the option to test out at the end of the quarter. He has to take it now and next term.” He chugged his tea, then stared down into the cup. “I think I need another.”

After that, it was off to Engaging with the Unexpected. Alden sat beside Andrzej, in what he privately thought of as the B-rank section. The discussion for the week would be on a series of three different superchaser incidents. There were so many examples for Instructor Marion to draw on that he hadn’t been able to limit himself to just one.

“All right,” said a third year girl, leaning back in her chair. “Before he gets here, we all agree that the correct response to the chaser-turned-flasher who visually assaulted the hero is just a strategic accident with a spell impression, right?”

“Can’t flash what you don’t have,” said her friend, holding up a hand for a high five.

Several people laughed. A couple sighed.

“I’d love to strategic accident a lot of them,” a boy said. “It would solve at least half of the issues we discuss in this seminar.”

Andrzej muttered under his breath in Polish and shook his head.

He wasn’t much of a talker in class. Alden found it surprising now that he’d seen him at the B-list—where he was quick to share ideas and eager to chat. This was a discussion-based course, so Andrzej couldn’t be completely silent. But his usual habit was to share three opinions, each spaced about twenty minutes apart, and then fade out of the conversation again rather than ardently defending his point.

Alden didn’t know if he disliked arguing in general or if it was the particulars of this class and its participants that made him keep his head down.

The girl who was always typing away on her phone on the opposite side of the room suddenly said, “Knock it off with the strat acc jokes. He’s coming.”

A few seconds later, Instructor Marion breezed into the room. “Morning everyone!”

“Good morning!”

The use of “strategic accidents” had been banned at the beginning of the quarter. Anyone who mentioned accidentally doing violence to fix problems got thrown out of class and marked absent for the day.

Not because violence was never the answer. Violence was, according to Instructor Marion, a valid tool and a subject worthy of serious and respectful consideration.

“But it comes with consequences,” he’d said last week after tossing a guy out into the hall. “Planning to use violence and squirm away from those consequences by saying, ‘I had a little oopsie,’ is not an acceptable approach to engaging with the unexpected.”

Alden had wondered what kind of lunatics he was going to school with that made it necessary for that to be a class rule…until these superchaser scenarios. There was this one married couple who made money videoing working superheroes up close and personal. Their country didn’t consider their actions to be interference, so they couldn’t be prosecuted. But they liked to run into the path of oncoming spells and projectiles to get unique footage for their channel.

Some of the unique footage came from Avowed having to perform dangerous stunts to dodge them. They were creating circuses on purpose.

It wasn’t like they deserved to die, but they did deserve to be locked up in a punishment closet so that they could engage with the darkness of death and gain knowledge of what they’d done wrong. Alden had written this down in his private notes as the Klee-pak Solution. Having it there was his way of venting, but he had enough sense and self-control not to present it to a human audience.

He pulled out his laptop and went over his less private notes.

In prepping for this class, he had decided to try to dodge the big moral questions everyone liked to fight about. After everything that had happened with Boe over the past week, he just wanted to quietly figure his own way through those things rather than having twenty different opinions flying at him—all of them presented with a vibrant certitude that made him feel lacking.

Instead, he wanted to talk about the complications presented by superchasers in general, and since the best way to steer conversations was to start them, he raised his hand.

“I think we should discuss how superchasers themselves aren’t unexpected. Once a hero or a team has stalkers, they know they’re going to appear at public events or whenever action is taking place somewhere the chasers can get to in time. Their presence is a given; it’s only the exact type of chaos they’ll cause that’s hard to anticipate. So we should talk about how knowing a difficult incident is more likely to occur than usual changes a hero’s preparation and response.”

Andrzej looked up. “I agree. We should talk about strategies for…ah… how do you say… <<composure maintenance>> during frustrating moments that are caused by people a hero might have personal problems with.”

“Translation for you all,” said the girl with the phone. “The B’s want to talk serious business this week instead of penile rights.”

“Penile rights are pretty serious, though.”

“My rights in that area matter a lot to me.”

Instructor Marion blinked around the room. “What exactly do you all mean by penal rights? Have you been discussing legal systems?”

“Yes, Instructor.”

“That’s definitely it.”

“We think the law should do a better job of protecting superheroes from civilian interference!”

******

<<I call this one bad long arms that make flower shapes,>> Lute whispered, leaning forward on his learning cushion and holding out his hands to show Alden a series of signs.

They were in the classroom for Conversation IV, and they were alternating between talking about the assignment whenever Instructor Rao was paying attention to them and talking about wordchains when she wasn’t.

Alden watched Lute’s wiggling fingers closely. And his wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Lute hadn’t been kidding when he said the chain was difficult. He’d been doing a shorthand version of it last night on the bus. The full gesture set that Alden would be practicing involved a lot more motion.

<<Blossoming tentacles?>> Alden suggested, texting him the English translation at the same time.

Lute liked to name his motions himself so that he could remember them more easily. Alden knew perfectly well that the Artonans had their own names for common hand signs, but Lute’s way had some benefits. There was a good chance that “blossoming tentacles” was going to stick in Alden’s mind better than whatever the real name was.

<<Blossoming tentacles!>> his tutor repeated, grinning at him.

Lute was wearing his toucan shirt with a green eyepatch, and his high-tops were in his lap. He’d decided not to give the shoe victimizers any more opportunities.

Alden repeated the gestures, and Lute gave him an odd look.

<<Wrong?>> Alden asked.

<<Not very wrong. Do it again. Less fast.>>

Alden started the sign at the level of his forehead and drew his arms down through the air as he went.

<<Stop there.>> Lute reached out and adjusted the angle of the first knuckle on his left middle finger. <<Like this. Go. Less fast.>>

Alden started back.

<<Stop there.>> Lute rotated one of his wrists slightly outward and adjusted the distance between his hands. <<Go.>>

Lute had completely forgotten about behaving like they were doing the assigned work. He got up on his knees to stare even more closely at Alden’s fingers. But Instructor Rao just sighed and walked past them when she did her next round of the classroom. Alden supposed she was grateful they were some of the only students not slipping other languages into their sentences today.

<<Stop. Do it from the beginning again.>>

When they left thirty minutes later, Lute watched Alden take his shoes from his cubby and sniff them. “You think they’re going to get you since they couldn’t get me?” he asked, tying his laces.

“I see no reason not to take some precautions.” Alden shoved his feet in.

“You’ve got a lunch break now?”

“An hour and fifteen minutes.”

“Do you want to go back to the dorm and practice more?”

Alden looked up. “I thought you had class?”

“It’s theater, and the instructor lets us play around half the time. If I don’t skip performance days and I do the homework, he’s not going to care.”

Lunch back in their room instead of in one of the cafeterias sounded good, and Alden didn’t want to refuse help if wrist rotation and knuckle angle were going to be important components of getting more complex wordchains right.

They headed back, and just a few minutes later they were walking into their apartment.

“Living on campus is so convenient,” Alden said. “Hour plus commutes down to intake were getting really old.”

“Yeah, for the past few months I was only living about twenty minutes away if the buses worked out, and that was still a pain.”

Lute wandered over to look in Haoyu’s cooker. “He’s trying something with chicken and onions. It hasn’t gone to hell yet.”

“Until recently, I was cooking two meals a day every day,” said Alden, grabbing a steamer bag of frozen mixed veggies and tossing it into the microwave. “Using ingredients mutated by a chaos field. Sometimes it even tasted okay. I’ve decided to believe in him. He will master the electric soup pot.”

He opened the cupboard and reached for a can of chickpeas.

“Get me some noodles while you’re there.”

Lute’s personal food shelf—because Lexi did not believe in shelf sharing—was below Alden’s. It was ninety percent an instant noodle collection and ten percent condiments to enhance the instant noodle collection. Alden selected a package that was supposed to be flavored like an “exotic lorch delicacy” and set it on the counter.

“Your hands,” said Lute, dropping his bag on the floor on plopping down in a chair. “They’re slightly enhanced?”

“They are.”

“I thought so!”

Alden was surprised at the delight in his voice.

“Mine too,” said Lute, holding up his hands. “You’ve got your dexterity boosted. For them especially? You see it in the music program a lot. And with some people who love handicrafts. I wasn’t expecting it from you.”

His curiosity was obvious. Alden started to deliver the lie he’d prepped for the interview committee in case they asked why he would waste his limited point supply that way. Quicker, nimbler hands would have helped me out with tasks at the lab on Moon Thegund. It made them feel like a priority when it was time to affix.

He’d decided that was better than blaming the System and saying it had chosen and applied the points in an unusual way without his input. Doing so would imply that this particular stat allocation was important for his skill. It might send people like Instructor Plim on a wild goose chase in an attempt to figure out what it meant.

I don’t want to lie to Lute, though.

This weekend had been fun. Last night had been fun. Lute had volunteered to tutor him.

Well, so what if you don’t want to? You don’t know him well enough to tell him the truth. You don’t even know him well enough to let slip that you’ve got something mysterious going on.

Was there any part of the truth he could share without potentially ruining his life?

“I like it,” he said finally. “I know all of us in the hero development program are supposed to be brutally practical about our stat allocation and talent selection. Especially if we’re not S’s. But I decided to boost my hand speed and dexterity for personal reasons at first, and now I like it so much that I’ll probably do it again the next time I get the chance. For more than the original reason. It’s an aspect of my powers that I enjoy in little ways all the time. I made a typo on my laptop the other day, and I suddenly realized I’d been speed typing for over an hour without a single one.”

Lute nodded. “The points I’ve got are fully baked now. All the hand-head stuff is refined and settled. I basically never miss a note on any normal composition…it makes it feel like the years I spent practicing prior to affixation were a waste, but if I’m not agonizing over that, it can be really fun. And I’ve learned a lot of card tricks. And I bet I’d be a great pickpocket.”

“I got all the high scores on a pinball machine in intake.”

“That’s cute. There’s a secret arcade on the Li Jean campus. The games are weird since they’re all custom made, but you should come with me sometime and watch me dominate the uni students.”

“How fast are you?”

“Not the absolute fastest compared to a bunch of uni gamers, but I don’t lose much at all. The System wants Chainers to be very good with our hands and with pattern memorization. It barely gave me any points to spend how I wanted.”

Well, yes. Those would be the enhancements that make you better at chaining. Plus something for his voice, too, I bet. Maybe his hearing as well.

Chainers would be amazing spell casters if they had authority senses. And also…

“It’s a perfect class for a musician,” Alden said. The microwave beeped, and he pulled out his vegetables.

“In some ways.”

There was an undercurrent of sadness in Lute’s voice. Before Alden could ask about it, he cleared his throat. “But about your hands…since they’re way better than I thought they were going to be, and since you’ve actually got a surprisingly good memory for signs—”

“Did you think I was dumb?”

“No, but I thought we’d spend several hours going over the macro gestures. And you’ve almost got them already. So we can finish those off while you…eat a can of beans and entire bag of cruciferous vegetables with a bunch of raw garlic on top. Are you punishing yourself or the people who have to sit beside you in class?”

Alden kept mincing his garlic. He was having mock Thunder Lettuce for lunch. “It’s healthy.”

“Not socially or spiritually.”

“You’re about to eat noodles flavored with something that looks like an alien dragonfly.”

“They’re nutty.”

Over their lunches, Lute went through the signs for the chain again, and in between slurps of noodles in a suspiciously gray broth, he corrected Alden’s form. The wordchain had no official English translation. Lute was calling it Self Mastery. The Artonan title was more like My Body Becomes my Assistant.

“I’m pretty sure Keiko calls this one Gracefulness,” said Lute, reaching across the table adjust two of Alden’s fingers. “Unless she’s using that name for a slightly different one. Are your arms getting tired?”

“No, I’m good.”

Lute sat back down and watched him. “I tried to teach a couple of people some wordchains when I first started school here. My roommates. And they were both mad when they got them almost right, and the chains still only worked like ten percent of the time. Even though I warned them. Those weren’t even difficult like this one. You’re not going to blame me if you spend a couple of weeks studying and it’s a bust for you, are you?”

“Nah. The first time I actually did a wordchain right, back in February, I had a pissy fit about what a pain in the ass they are. I thought I’d been doing them correctly before and they just didn’t have very noticeable effects. I was in a class to learn them and everything. Then I actually nailed it, and I realized they were supposed to do a very obvious magical thing.”

“You must have had a terrible teacher if they didn’t warn you.”

“She had cheek implants, and she’d had her hairline lasered back a little. So I’m sure she was trying to be authentic.”

Lute’s expression turned pained. “Wellll…anyway, what was the chain?”

“Peace of Mind. I’ve got it down now.”

“That’s a good one to learn. It’s weak, but it’s good because it’s weak. The higher level chains that do similar things can really mess you up.”

Alden did not doubt it.

He paused again so Lute could show him a specific flicking motion, then he said, “I was saving the peaceful half of that chain for myself, and Hazel made it snap back on me. I’m ninety-nine percent sure it was her.”

Lute’s lips pursed.

“So it was her,” said Alden.

“Due to the tattoo above my butt I can’t share—”

“It was totally her,” said Alden. “I knew it. It was too much of a coincidence for her to be standing right across the street when it happened, and then she was all smiles and, ‘Hi, Alden!’ And I…ugh, why?! I gave her the class. I haven’t done anything to make her mad at me unless it was leaving her to affix by herself, and I’ve thought about it way too much, and it was weird of her to expect me to hang out with her longer when she was already interrupting my friend’s funeral! She didn’t even say ‘sorry for your loss!’”

Lute was cupping his chin in his hands and nodding in overly dramatic sympathy.

Alden suddenly realized how he must sound. And his hands were still in the air, halfway through Blossoming Tentacles. He shoved down his annoyance and lowered his arms.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to rant. I’ll shut up about your cousin.”

“No!” Lute cried. “Don’t shut up. You’re just getting started!”

“I want to focus on practicing. And I know it’s not a huge deal. It’s just…her pressing the debt due button on my wordchain felt so childishly fucking mean. It’s like she saw I’d spent hours building a sandcastle for myself, and she walked over and stomped it. Only the sandcastle was a magical effect I’d prepped for my mental health.” He sighed. “Am I a clueless jerk? Is there some friendly reason to call in someone’s wordchain? In public. Without asking.”

“There’s a list of skills possessed by my family members I’ve agreed not to disclose. I can talk about some partially, others fully, and others not at all. We have this Aulia-ordained brand to uphold. Ninety percent of it is just secretive bullshit for the sake of secretive bullshit. Which she loves. I mean…being ‘bound to secrecy’ is part of our mystique at this point. So don’t buy in to the drama. Wordchains are common sense compared to most magic. And so in a lot of ways Chainer is a common sense class.”

Lute stirred his noodles. “When I finally affixed and got access to the deep dark powers of the Velra line, I said, ‘That’s it?’ And I don’t think I’ve ever offended my grandmother more in my life. Which is a shame, because I wasn’t even trying right then. I was just surprised that we were so much less spooky than I’d been led to believe.”

“Spooky?”

“‘Chainers always get more than they pay for,” said Lute. “‘Your chain failed? Did you make a Velra mad?’ And my personal favorite is probably, ‘Fate always smiles on the Chainer last.’”

“Are those…common sayings?” Alden couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have family-specific cliches.

“You don’t hear them every day, but you do hear them. So I was somewhat underwhelmed when I actually became a full-fledged Velra.” He shivered. “And then I let my guard down and walked face first into the ten percent of being a Chainer that actually is insane and spooky. Anyway, that’s a humiliating story for never. You asked if there was a friendly reason for someone to, hypothetically, call in someone else’s debt. And my answer is the common sense one—nope. Unless your friend is bound and gagged and the beach police are coming, why would it ever be nice to kick over the sandcastle they spent three hours four minutes and eleven seconds building?”

I suppose a Chainer would know the duration of common chains down to the second.

“Wizards can do it, by the way,” Lute added. “I can tell you that. I don’t know if all of them can, but my boss and his coworkers can complete other peoples’ chains prematurely and by force.”

“Not friendly at all,” said Alden.

“It’s not. But when they do it, it’s also not without purpose. He’ll almost definitely tell you what that purpose is when we call him together. And if not, you could probably ask any wizard who you feel comfortable enough around. Aulia’s got that particular wordchain wrinkle on the Do Not Disclose list because, like I said, cagey for the sake of caginess is her modus operandi. But it’s just a fact of life for Artonans who use major chains.”

They finished their lunch and went through the signs for the chain several more times.

While he was correcting Alden’s positioning during the last repetition, Lute said, “You said Hazel tried to talk to you. I have no comment on her powers, but Aulia probably told her to make friends with you and bring you over for a visit. Or Hazel heard her talking about you and decided to get in on it by herself.”

“I guessed that,” Alden said flatly. “She failed.”

“She might have failed on purpose. Or she might have tripped over her own personality again. She might really still be mad at you, too. For the funeral thing.” He adjusted Alden’s wrist again. “Hazel grew up devouring my grandmother’s attention, and ever since she started getting a lot of Aulia’s time instead of all of it, it’s like she’s starving.”

He placed his hands on the table and watched Alden finish the set. “She wanted you to see her faint.”

“What?”

“When she affixed. At the funeral. She wanted someone there to see her faint.”

“Was she scared of that happening? It hardly ever does.”

“No, she wasn’t scared of it happening,” Lute said. “She wanted it to. It happens more often to S ranks. The System needs additional time for whatever reason and knocks you out for it. Sometimes it talks to you.”

I am very familiar with that.

Lute continued, “Fainting during affixation and getting a meeting with the System doesn’t mean you’re going to be a better Avowed, but it has specialness connotations. Hazel grew up…okay, she had a messed up childhood. But she grew up sure she’d be a fainter, and she wanted witnesses. Definitely not me, but I was who was closest when you left. She called asking for an affixation buddy, so they made me go back to look after her until her parents could get there.”

His eye wasn’t focused on Alden’s face anymore. He was staring across the room toward the window.

“She faked it. When I walked up, she was lying there on her side like she’d fallen off the bench she was sitting on. I wasn’t surprised. I was really used to her being special, too, so I just thought she was an idiot for not going to sit on the grass before she gave the System the okay. And then I saw her rubbing her cheek on the gravel below the bench to give herself scratches. To make it look more like she’d fallen.”

Oh my god.

Alden felt embarrassed just hearing about someone else getting caught doing that.

“What on earth did you say?”

“You know,” Lute said slowly, “I think I was going to let her get away with it. She oscillated between ignoring me and tormenting me when we were kids, so I didn’t feel sorry for her. But me getting the Chainer S was soul-crushing for Hazel. It had been saved for years especially for her. The family paid a different new Avowed every couple of months to sit on it for her and then pass it off, just waiting for the day when she’d be selected.

“I actually have another cousin who got S, wanted Chainer, and had to take another class instead. Because even though Hazel had already turned sixteen, everyone still thought…maybe. Probably. Sometimes the System picks you late.”

Lute’s frown deepened.

“So I wasn’t going to say anything. Because even though I didn’t want it, I did end up with the toy that we all thought had her name on it. And I wasn’t nice about it because Hazel was never nice to me…and then there she was rubbing her own face in the dirt. It was enough. I didn’t feel the need to grind it in any more.”

“But you did?” Alden guessed when Lute went quiet.

“A couple of days later we were having a party to celebrate her affixation. A big family bash in her honor. She decided to cap the festivities off with a reenactment of one those times she tormented pathetic little Lute.” He shrugged. “I should have left it alone. But when she did it, she was trying to set me off. She just didn’t know I had such humiliating ammunition to send back her way.”

“And you advised me recently to go to one of your family parties.”

“The catering is always perfection,” said Lute. “Just go say hi to Grandma, act like a typical teenager who’s at least mildly interested in rubbing shoulders with the superrich, then vanish…and don’t engage with Hazel. That’s my only advice for dealing with her.”

“I don’t think I’ll go at all. Unless Natalie is the one catering, then I have to ponder it.”

“Suit yourself.” Lute got up to drop his bowl in the sink. “Did you like the tutoring session?”

“Yes. Thank you. It’s really helpful to have an in-person teacher.” It was going to decrease the time it took to learn by a lot.

“And you still want to master this wordchain?”

“If you don’t mind tutoring me more and getting permission from your boss.”

“Cool! In that case, what time does your class end tonight? The PE that you’re all stressed about.”

They were all a little stressed. The very brief course description said it was just physical education and magic development, so there was no real reason to be. But everyone in the group was anxious about it being something intense…because the last time they’d been in the gym had been so intense. Even the ridiculous and fun hour Alden had spent with the B-List hadn’t quite been enough to take the edge off his nerves.

“It’s over at 7:00 PM.”

“And it’s almost one o’clock now,” said Lute. “Perfect. I’ll bestow Self Mastery on you. It lasts a little less than six hours, so it’ll carry you through the rest of the day and most of your class. You can see what it’s like to live with it.”

Alden was startled. He didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to him to ask Lute about that. He had a skill that let him bestow wordchains on groups of people; it would be weird if it didn’t work on a single individual, too.

“Can you give me the debt, too?”

“I can give you the debt later if you’re willing to accept it,” said Lute. “I don’t mind just giving you the good part…”

“I’ll pay my own bills,” said Alden. “And it’s great to be able to know what it feels like before I commit to learning it.”

And there was the gremlin to consider. Alden didn’t think it would care about this, since someone else was responsible for the missing half of the chain. But if it was offended by the process, he’d need to take both halves to make it shush.

Lute smiled.

A second later, Alden felt himself being targeted. That, he had expected. What he hadn’t expected was to suddenly have a very clear sense of Lute Velra’s power, reaching out toward him and stopping just short of touching him, like he was politely waiting for Alden to start up an authority control exercise.

That’s not it. I think this is just his skill bringing us closer. It must be—

[Accept Wordchain from Lute?]

[Primary Wordchain Effects: heightened awareness of body, heightened control of body, heightened spatial awareness]

[Approximate Wordchain Duration: 5 hours 49 minutes]

[Yes/No]

He hadn’t expected giving permission through his interface to be part of it either.

“You should be getting a notification.”

Alden was suddenly nervous about what was going to happen when he accepted. Not about the effects of the wordchain itself, but…what was Lute going to do to him to give it to him?

Alden couldn’t ask because the answer was just going to be, “What do you mean? I’m just going to use my skill. Duh.”

But Lute being close in this way implied that some kind of metaphysical touching beyond simple targeting was about to take place. And while Alden was almost positive it wouldn’t be damaging to him in any way, he really wished he knew if the bestowal skill was about to give him a Kibby-sized friendly pat or a sharp stab or what.

Also, Lute was noticeably strong. Nothing at all like the overwhelming forces the Primary or his sister had been. But Alden could still sense that a more powerful presence was right beside him, taking an interest in him.

Oh fuck it. It’s getting more awkward and nerve-wracking the longer I wait to do the obvious thing.

He commanded himself to hold still, accept the skill, and not authority smack his helpful roommate in a panic if anything weird happened, then he selected YES.

Lute’s skill brushed against him.

Alden had a split-second impression of something being passed to him, and either he’d gotten it right when he told himself to be accepting or Lute’s skill was really great at its job, because there was no resistance when it became part of him.

The skill withdrew, and Alden couldn’t find any evidence of what had happened at all. Authoritatively.

I guess it’s subtle? Or not, and I’m still too much of a beginner when it comes to understanding what goes on with myself in this way.

He hadn’t even been able to identify the carriage geas in his affixation until she told him to look for it, so it wasn’t that surprising.

Still it’s odd that someone can give me something, and I can’t find it.

“You look really tense. It’s over. You can relax.” Lute’s expression was amused.

Alden felt himself start to blush. He didn’t want to. He stopped it.

Oh. “Oh!”

The mild feeling of embarrassment didn’t leave, but a blush was banishable? It had taken thought and effort, but thought and effort had never worked that way for him before.

“Dude! How strong is this wordchain?”

“Neat, right? Just a warning…there are some inconveniences. You’ve got amazing control over your body. Anything you should be capable of doing or noticing on your best day ever will suddenly be much more natural for you. On the flip side, a lot of things that go on with your body aren’t actually enjoyable, and heightened awareness of them is either maddening or disgusting.”

He glanced at Alden’s empty plate.

“I’m not someone who does a lot of exercise, but I think it’s going to be great for performance in your hero PE class. And I suspect it’s good for developing muscle memory? But it can make everyday stuff hyper-annoying.”

Alden suddenly realized what he meant.

“My own breath is burning me,” he said, fanning his face. “The garlic is everywhere.”

Lute snickered. “Yeah. I’m not sure if you actually taste it better, but you’re definitely better at being constantly aware of it. So have fun with that! If you can’t stand the side effects, call me, and I’ll come take what’s left of the chain back.”

“What would that involve on your end of things? Do you just save it in special Chainer box for later? Or do you delete it from the universe?”

Lute slapped his own butt dramatically.

Alden blinked. “Is that your new way of indicating your family tattoo?”

“If you’re going to keep asking lots of questions about Chainer, I need a quicker method for blaming Aulia for my non-answers. Like I said, if you assume it’s common sense, you’ll be right most of the time.”

“Well, I suspect you’ve got some kind of chain-saving magic because you delivered that one without actually doing the chain yourself. So you probably banked it somehow? That’s cool.”

“Lute Velra—very cool guy. Now, if other people would just fall for my trap, too…”



******