Outside Influences

Bel dragged herself forward. Her eyes struggled in the dim light and she could barely keep one foot moving in front of the other. She didn’t complain though, not with the threat of being captured and dragged back to the High Temple hanging over her. Sadly, and regardless of her motivation, her body was reaching its limit.

Bel glanced up, gauging the time that passed. The sun was nearly low enough that its colors were dyed blue by the Barrier, although it would take another hour before it would dip below the top of the mountain range to their west.

“I’m not going to be able to keep this up much longer,” she admitted.

Beth looked back at her. She fiddled with one of her braids as she examined Bel’s pallor and labored breathing.

“The entrance should be just up this incline. Can you make that, Bel?”

“You mean this mountain,” James wheezed. “This is a mountain. This is no hill.”

Beth laughed, but she had stopped walking to give her siblings a break. “No snow on top, at least not in Spring, so it’s a hill. The Spines, now those are mountains. The Saws are just some little hills.”

James sank down onto a stone so that he could shrug off his pack. “If I could just use magic,” he complained, “this entire experience would be tolerable.”

Bel and James spent a few minutes huffing and puffing while Beth gazed back upon their path with a pensive expression. She didn’t offer any words of encouragement, but she did give them a break to regain their breath and slake their thirst.

“I guess I should have pushed you two into more training. You’re probably gonna have a bad time in the tunnels.”

Bel dabbed at the sweat dripping from her face and groaned as she stood up. “More suffering, yay,” she monotoned. “You know, I’m beginning to think I’m just not suited for… well, for doing much of anything.”

Beth opened her mouth to respond, but then she paused to peer over Bel’s shoulder.

“Ah, there they are. Probably easier to deal with them out here than in a tunnel.”

Bel turned and squinted at the woods. “Who?”

“The pursuit that I’ve been waiting for. Looks like three. A little light, but maybe they’re skilled.”

Beth pointed to the trees a few hundred meters below. Bel could maybe see some movement. Or maybe not; Beth had way better eyesight than her siblings. Bel wondered if it was one of the abilities inscribed upon her core.

Beth dropped her comically large pack behind a tree and tugged on her different weapons, verifying that they were ready for business. Then she pulled a small, sheathed dagger from the inner fold of her jacket and tossed it to Bel.

“I’ll let you borrow this. Try to not hurt yourself. Do you want a blade James?”

He shook his head. “I’ll do fine with my sling and my shillelagh. The Battle of Agincourt demonstrated the superiority of ranged–”

Beth clapped a hand over his mouth. “Sure, sticks and stones. That was the battle with the mud and the armor, right? The lessons probably aren’t applicable here.”

Beth patted him consolingly on the shoulder. “I’ll go ambush them while you two serve as bait. Try to look vulnerable.”

Their sister took a step and then stopped. “Oh, don’t be afraid to run for it if they get too close, okay? But I’ll try to take them out quickly.”

Bel and James nodded. Beth turned and, with a dusting of darkness that burst from her hands, she melted into the shadows cast by the tall trees around her. Silent as a shadow, she stepped into the forest and disappeared.

“Damn, I want magic so bad,” James complained.

Bel half pulled out the dagger and examined her reflection in its flawless surface. Unlike Beth, she looked scared and helpless. It didn’t help that her dead snakes hung limp around her head, making it look like she’d already been defeated. “I’ll settle for surviving,” she muttered.

James bumped her and grinned. “Nah, gotta reach for the stars.”

He glanced in the direction that Beth had gone and then back at her. “Speaking of reaching, maybe you should get behind me? You’ve always been a bit, uh, accident prone. Don’t draw that dagger unless you need to.”

Bel puffed her cheeks. “Gee, thanks brother.”

“Just telling the truth, sis.”

James reached into his pocket and pulled out a rounded stone, which he loaded into the pouch of his sling. He spun it, filling the air with a high-pitched buzz. “I think I see them.”

Bel noticed the colorful birds fleeing the vicinity first, but a few heavy heartbeats later she saw several people moving through the trees. Three figures darted over the rough ground, headed straight for her and James.

The front one moved almost silently. He nimbly placed his feet in between the exposed tree roots, clearly at home in the woods. Bel recognized him as one of the hunters from Baytown from his long white beard, ragged cloak, and the bow slung over his shoulder. They had bumped into him a few times in the forest, and he’d hassled them once or twice before Beth chased him off with insults to his looks and manhood.

The old man was far past his prime, but he still looked dangerous to Bel.

He was also a fervent follower of Technis, which was broadcast by the large symbol in the shape of a “T” that he wore around his neck. His religious fervor would explain why he was leading two young acolytes who were struggling to keep up. The hunter must have sped up after spotting James and Bel, clearly eager to inflict his deity’s punishment.

Bel was surprised when the hunter suddenly slide to a halt, letting the two acolytes overtake him. Then she saw him pull the bow from his should and an arrow from his quiver. She was just about to duck behind a tree for cover when a dark shadow burst from the bushes near him. Bel lost sight of the hunter as he fell below a bush, so she assumed that Beth had taken care of him.

That left the other two men. As far as Bel could see, they were typical acolytes; their ranks were marked by ornate filigree along the sleeves of their dark black robes. The short swords that they wielded looked sharp and deadly, but their clothing wasn’t really suited for running about the woods, especially not while waving sharp weapons around.

That made them slow and cautious, which gave James a perfect shot with his sling when one of acolytes stopped to pull his sleeve free from an entangling bramble. James spun his sling and launched a stone with practiced ease. The rock ripped through the air and took the man in the shoulder. The acolyte cried out in pain, dropping his sword to clench his hand around the spot where he’d been struck.

James quickly loaded a second stone. He spun it up, but waited for an unobstructed shot. He launched a second missile a few spin later, but the leading acolyte hid his head behind his wide sleeves and the stone bounced harmlessly off of the unnaturally protective fabric.

The lead acolyte was too close for James to load another missile, so he dropped his sling and transferred his fighting stick to his right hand. When the man was only a few strides away, James pulled his arm back to ready a tremendous swing.

The acolyte stopped abruptly, his arms windmilling around for balance – or at least that’s what it looked like, until one of his sleeves simply detached and flew at James’ face. Bel thought it humorous until she realized that the sleeve was moving under its own power. The acolyte hadn’t stopped to avoid James’ attack, he’d stopped to unleash some kind of attack of his own.

The detached sleeve unravelled itself to stretch across the few strides separating the two combatants. Bel’s heart clenched with

fear as the animated fabric reached out with the dexterity of a living tentacle.

Bel squeezed her dagger tightly as she watched James swing the knobbed end of his stick in an attempt to knock the animated sleeve to the ground. The fabric was unexpectedly dextrous; it wrapped around his weapon, refusing to be knocked away. James tugged and pulled, but the cloth slithered from the stick onto his arm and stiffened, locking his wrist and elbow into place.

Bel leaped forward when she saw the acolyte brandishing his sword, terrified that her brother would be cut down while entangled with the vicious sleeve. She only made it a couple of steps before her trailing leg caught on an errant root. For a moment, Bel was suspended in the air, staring at the acolyte as his eyes flicked over to her.

She threw her knife.

Her grip had been for stabbing, not throwing, but she had to do it before she hit the ground. She knew that the acolyte could have just ignored her clumsy attack, but he didn’t know that. Beth had told Bel repeatedly that the world was filled with unexpected abilities, so you could never know with certainty that some clumsy attack wasn’t actually something deadly.

Bel saw her target shift his stance to deflect her knife. Then she hit the ground, completely unprepared for the impact. Her jaw clacked shut hard enough to make her teeth hurt and the breath was knocked out of her body, but she forced herself up and staggered forward on all fours. She would help her brother even if she had to crawl there on her hands and knees.

Bel looked up to see how her brother was doing. Her distraction had worked, at least a little bit, and James was capitalizing upon it by awkwardly prodding his stick into the acolyte’s gut.

Perhaps fearing some strange ability from one of them, the man backed off a step and lowered his sword into a more guarded stance.

Bel’s eyes widened in surprise when a patch of darkness burst from the acolyte’s chest. At first she thought that he had some strange ability, but the darkness was followed by a spray of what must have been bits of his heart and lungs. Beth had come to their rescue.

Bel watched the acolyte’s body spasm as it fell, finally revealing Beth standing behind him, her favorite dagger held aloft triumphantly. Blood dripped from the tip of the needle-like weapon, and a satisfied look spread over her blood-spattered face.

Bel relaxed instantly. As the adrenaline left her blood she spread like a slug over the cool ground.

Beth flexed her hands. A swarm of tiny motes of darkness expelled from her hands, swirled into the air, and attached to her body. After a moment they fell from her, taking away the bits of gore that she’d collected from their assailants. Bel could feel a bit of the essence that was spilling from the dead acolyte, but her broken core wasn’t able to absorb any of it. She couldn’t help but feel slightly jealous as Beth knelt down and stuck her hand onto the corpse for a moment, sucking up all of the loose essence as she whispered an offering to her god, Durak.

Bel and her family were still alive. She supposed that she shouldn’t complain.

Bel was happy to just slump across the cool ground, but the gruesome sight of the corpse was a good reminder that she couldn’t relax. Bel regained her feet as Beth carefully hopped over the corpse on her way to James. Beth put away her stabbing dagger and pulled out a short knife to cut him free of the entangling sleeve that still refused to release his arm.

“Sorry I was late,” Beth apologized. “I wanted to be sure that those three were all of them.”

Beth looked back into the woods, frowning. “Honestly, I was expecting a bit more than this, so I waited for longer than I could have to strike. They just seemed a bit…”

Beth tilted her head towards the dead bodies. She had finished off the second acolyte only a few steps from where James had hit him with his sling. “I mean, who would send just a couple of junior acolytes and a washed up old hunter?”

James grunted his thanks as Beth freed his arm from the dangerous cloth. He winced as he stretched his freed limb, but Bel didn’t think he had suffered any injury.

Beth gestured back into the woods. “So, do you guys want to try to loot the corpses for anything? I already grabbed their coins, but maybe you can get something better than that stick, James?”

He scowled and hefted his weapon. “It’s not a stick. It’s a shillelagh. It’s Irish and it’s cool and it reminds me of my dad. You wouldn’t understand Beth, I know you hate your parents.”

Beth smacked him on the back, forcing him forward a step. “Sure thing, bud. But if I could teach you sword magic would you still be using the stick?”

“Well…”

She chuckled. “Here in Satrap we kill our enemies with pointy things, not sticks.”

Beth pointed to the short sword that the acolyte had dropped.

“A sword isn’t easy to hide though, and there’s plausible deniability with my shillelagh,” James explained. “And if I use it to carry my stuff then it’ll just look like a harmless stick with a bag on the end.”

Beth sighed. “That’s because it is a harmless stick. Please take the sword.”

Bel could kind of sympathize with her brother. Without a core – and the abilities that came with it – hiding would always be a better option than fighting. She could still vividly remember him bashing in the guard’s skull in the temple though, so she was sure that he would pull his weight when it really mattered.

Bel picked up the short sword herself. Even if she couldn’t use it well, she could still hand it off to her brother when the time came.

While Bel was getting the sheath free from its former owner, James grumbled and stomped over to his sling, picked it up, and crammed it back into his pocket.

Bel patted him on the back. “Don’t worry about her James, she’s just worried about us. And hey, that was good work with the sling!”

Beth nodded, “yeah, good work James. Nice rock throwing.”

Bel offered the sword to him, but he shook his head. She shrugged and put the sheath onto her own belt. In the future, hiding would be a better choice for her as well, but she didn’t think that would be an option if anyone saw her snakes. She assumed that being discovered would lead to… maybe a hanging? She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t intend to find out.

Beth clapped her hands for attention. “Okay,” she said with a cheerful smile, “now that the excitement is out of the way and we’ve all had a rest break, let’s finish climbing. The entrance should be right up this little uphill and down a little side path.” Beth made a stabbing motion. “It’s a hole bored straight into the rock. It was an old mining tunnel until they went too deep and the risks started to outweigh the rewards.”

Bel and James sighed, but Beth grabbed her oversized pack and continued up the incline as if they hadn’t just been in a fight for their lives. Bel stared at the ground as she carefully pulled herself up the hill. Why did the ground have to be so uneven? And so uphill? And so covered in roots?

Bel had to grab onto some stubborn trees growing out of the rocky ground to make progress and keep herself from tripping, and she was gasping for breath and soaked in a fresh wave of sweat before a minute passed.

She was so focused on the difficult task that she wasn’t looking up, so she walked right into Beth’s pack. Beth was just standing in the middle of the path, blocking the way forward.

Bel gasped for breath for a moment before opening her mouth. “What–oh.”

Bel stared at the tunnel entrance.

The former tunnel entrance.

Instead of a gaping maw leading into the abyss, Bel saw a pile of rubble with a few wooden beams sticking out. Rocks had vomited forth from the opening and covered the trail, making the path ahead treacherous. So much for that plan, she thought.

“This means even more walking, doesn’t it?” she groaned.