How Strange Are You?

Activate my living carapace graft to cover my head and extrude spikes on my forearms.

Cast a glamour to render myself unseen and silent.

Run for cover, and give Dave a call on my cell between breaths; he’s waiting around the corner in our van, and he won’t ever let me down.

I open my eclipse-eye wide enough to ignore the darkness, and see a flesh-mod factory the size of a city as it crashes through the spar jungle, running on a thousand segmented legs before a pursuing glial storm.

Through the wireless cam I installed atop the Seattle Space Needle, I dial the magnification of the mil-spec lens up to the maximum using the optical range finder as a guide, and focus on the silver yacht putting into the port from Fujian.

From the ramparts of mighty Hazzurrium, I see the surviving Seventh Sentinel, which stands a couple thousand feet tall, its head literally scraping the clouds, and its mineral armor eroded but still strong.

I collect a sample, bring it back to my lab, and begin running an array of genetic and chemical tests. Science, even when it gets weird, has never let me down.

I brave umber wolves to petition the Court of Sleep for access to a dead soul who took the secret I require to its grave.

I uncoil my umbilical and plug it into the soil. The All Song thunders in my brain, and from it I extract meaning.

I suck air into the translucent sack on my back, creating a rigid airfoil glider that allows me to effortlessly soar over a spar jungle.

I answer a riddle, and a traveling dlamma agrees to bear me on its back to the Borderlands of the Strange.

I tap my com and issue an order. In less than a minute, a stealth helicopter lowers down a nylon ladder, extracting me from the top of the collapsing skyscraper.

My wits, my education, my experience, and my friends.

A fragment of the true code is woven through each of my cells.

The milk of a thousand devils, given to me by my father, distilled into a potent elixir.

I’m a Clever Spinner who Solves Mysteries

I’m a Strong Vector who Regenerates Tissues

I’m a Daring Paradox who Wields Soul-Sorcery