Outside Influences

Flann patted his stomach as he leaned back in the sand. “Ah, that’s not bad. Almost makes all that splashing about worth it.”

He closed his eyes happily. “Reckon I could go for a nap now.”

Bel frowned at her own cooked crab. She didn’t have Flann’s sharp, pointy teeth and his willingness to chomp on the shells. She glanced at Orseis and watched with envy as the girl’s powerful suckers easily gripped a shell while she prised it open. Bel tapped her fingers against her crab, forming smalls claws with her nails that she attempted to put to good use. With a grunt of frustration she finally gave up and smashed the stupid thing with a rock.

“Picking out the bits of shell isn’t so bad,” she muttered.

Orseis giggled. “I’ll bet you wish you had some of these, don’t you?” She waved her tentacles around.

Bel shook her head. “Not really. I’d like some sharp claws instead.”

“Claws?” Orseis asked, baffled.

“Claws,” Bel affirmed. “My aunt said that I should be using some claws. There are probably some abilities on her path, but I was hoping to get good enough at shaping my body that I could make something useful out of my nails.”

Orseis’ eyes narrowed. “Your aunt? You mean the goddess who destroyed the Dark Ravager?”

“Yup. Sorry, but I’ll have to take her advice over your suckers.”

Orseis snorted. “You were just bait, weren’t you?”

Bel’s snakes hissed and she narrowed her eyes at her tentacled companion.

“Whoah, whoah, I’m just saying what I heard. But you weren’t exactly made for your fighting–”

Bel glared at the girl with five-fold the base mana.

Orseis locked up mid sentence, her eyes wide with surprise. Bel continued picking at the bits of shell, too hungry to give up but not desperate enough to want to feel them scraping her teeth. Flann cracked his eyes open for a moment and glanced back and forth between the two of them before rolling over with a grunt.

Orseis stumbled as she regained control of her body. “Hagfish bile, Bel, what was that for?” she angrily demanded.

Bel arched an eyebrow. “You were just saying that I couldn’t fight – I just wanted to make sure you know what I can do. My mom didn’t make me weak.”

Orseis waved her tentacles in the air in surrender. “Okay, sure. You were still bait though.”

Bel snorted. “Yeah, to catch a god.” She reached up and rubbed around the scar that cut across her face. “It all went according to my mother’s plans, I guess.”

Orseis ripped another crab apart, but this time she handed it to Bel, the meat neatly freed from the upper shell. Bel accepted it gratefully.

“Will you be less grumpy after you eat?”

“Maybe.”

“So you keep mentioning that you have to hunt down this other guy too – Technis, right? Is that why your mom made you? To hunt people down?”

Bel shrugged. “I don’t think so. She’s after Technis for revenge for locking me up, at least as far as I understand, but she obviously made me before that happened. Going after the Dark Ravager was just something Kjar wanted to do because he was messing around with the spirits on Olympos, so I don’t think that was part of Lempo’s plan either.”

“And Dutcha?”

Bel wrinkled her nose. “She wanted to get back here because she was kicked off of Olympos for causing trouble, I think. She promised to wait quietly… well, quietly for her. There’s more to Lempo’s plans, but I don’t know them.”

“Huh. Well, maybe Lempo just wanted a child.”

Bel laughed, the absurdity of the notion catching her off guard.

“Why on Olympos would a goddess want a child?”

“Hey, why does anyone have children? To create a legacy or to make something new. Or maybe it’s just an instinct.”

Bel wrinkled her brow. “Well, I’ve never gotten a chance to talk with her.”

Not entirely true, she did speak to me once. It knocked me out.

“What about your parents, Orseis? Did they ever tell you why they had you?”

Orseis clacked her beak loudly with distaste. “Nah, I never met ’em.”

“Oh,” Bel gasped, “I’m sorry.”

“Nah, I think it’s natural for the ocean. I met a couple of my siblings – at least I think they were my siblings. I’m way more human than any of them though.”

Orseis leaned back and looked up at the roof of the ceiling. “Didn’t really fit in there.”

Bel nodded. “I can understand that feeling.”

She was trying to think of something encouraging to say when a large yawn forced itself upon her.

Orseis glanced in her direction and couldn’t resist a yawn of her own. Even Flann, facing the other way, broke out in a large yawn.

Bel frowned. “I guess that we’ve been down here for a while. Why don’t we climb a tree before we go to sleep? James said that climbing trees was a good way to stay safe in a forest.”

They looked at the massive towers of wood.

Flann pushed himself to his feet, brushing sad from his clothes and fur. “I can say I’ve ever seen trees so large, so it didn’t even occur to me to climb ’em. But it sounds like a fair plan to me.”

It didn’t take them very long to find tree that the three of them couldn’t have wrapped around even if they were tied together, hand to foot. They marveled at its impressive size for a few moments before Flann scampered up the trunk. His claws dug into the soft bark as he ascended, and soon he’d risen above the lowest branches.

“Got a nice hollow up here,” he called down. “Probably big enough for us and our stuff.”

Bel tried to shape her nails into claws again, but the going was so rough that she nearly ripped her nails straight out. Soon she found herself pulling out a pair of pitons that were meant to be used to pull open their parachutes for a jump, but they were sharp enough to dig into the soft bark of the tree.

Maybe I should get that Gorgon ability that turns my nails metallic.

Orseis spread her tentacles wide and rapidly ascended after Bel, pulling herself onto their chosen branch with a feat of acrobatics.

Bel snorted with amusement and turned to look at Flann’s hiding place.

The hollow looked large enough for the three of them, although they wouldn’t have a lot of extra leg room. “Looks cozy,” she said.

Flann was busy tidying the hollow; tossing out bits and pieces of detritus and throwing down their bags to serve as pillows. Orseis hung her cloak over the branch so that it would dry out, and Bel and Flann quickly followed suit. Flann replaced his wet pants with a loose robe and Bel began removing her own soaked articles. She groaned with relief as she unbuckled and pulled her laminar armor off. It wasn’t wet – Kjar had made it impervious to just about anything – but it was heavy and uncomfortable.

“You’re not gonna keep that on?” Flann asked.

Bel massaged her aching muscles and sighed. “I’ll put it back on, I just need a break.” She looked at her companions, and found them just as worn out as she felt. They squeezed themselves into the hollow like a pack of tired slugs, exhaustion weighing them down.

As the three of them settled into a comfortable sleeping arrangement in the hollow, Flann broke the weary silence with a question. “Are we close enough for your magic rock to work?”

Bel touched the small, silver earring that was the evolved version of the rock phone.

“My phone? I don’t think that we’re close enough to the pillar for it to work.”

Her snakes curled around her head as she thought. “I’m not sure how close we need to be. I’ve never understood James’ explanations. We’ll have to head in that direction tomorrow and hopefully it’ll pick up at some point.”

There was silence for a few moments and Bel almost started to drift off, but then Orseis stirred.

“Hey,” she asked, hesitantly. “What’s it like having a brother?”

Bel grinned. “Why? You want one? I thought you had siblings.”

Orseis laughed. “Yeah, but not really.”

She sighed wistfully. “I think I wouldn’t mind having a sibling. You didn’t grow up with any family, right? You adopted each other?”

Bel nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t know about my mother at the time, and it’s not like she’s in constant contact. Having a brother is nice, although he can be stupid at times.” Bel tilted her head and thought about it. “Yeah, siblings are nice. You can talk with them about pretty much anything.”

She idly wiped some sand from one of her snakes. “We don’t agree about everything though – I mean, he likes putting this awful stuff in his mouth to make his breath minty. And don’t even get me started complaining about Beth; she drives me absolutely crazy with her constant talk of revenge, and she’s a maniac for drills and exercises.”

Orseis hummed contemplatively.

Bel scratched at her cheek; maybe that had been a little much? “Your family really didn’t get along, Orseis?”

The girl waved a tentacle in the air. “No. I mean… I guess there are some out there somewhere. I could see them from my egg before I hatched, but by the time I came out my mother had already left and I didn’t really know enough to think about siblings at the time.”

“Huh.” Bel chewed on her lip as she tried to imagine how being trapped in an egg would feel. “Hey, Orseis, sorry if it’s rude, but what are you anyway? James was guessing octopus. You look a lot more human than we’d thought, though, now that you’ve taken off your hood.”

Orseis laughed. “I’m mostly cuttlefish. It’s a weird matchup though, since humans and cuttlefish don’t have a lot in common. I got unlucky, and all of my non-human features are on my top side.” Her tentacles writhed in frustration. “Getting the non-human stuff on the bottom side would have been better.”

Bel shifted to look at her companion. “Why’s that? I don’t know much about your culture out here in the Golden Plains.”

Orseis held up a tentacle, examining it. “Well, I suppose we like having human top sides so we can look at each other and have something in common. And also, would you brother be interested in Daran if her ant parts were all up top?”

Daran was a sweet girl, but Bel couldn’t picture her brother kissing someone with an ant’s head.

Orseis nodded at Bel’s silence. “I’m lucky that I can at least cover some stuff up.”

She pulled up her lip, revealing her beak. It looked like a single, solid tooth. “I filed down my beak so my mouth looks human. There’s nothing to do about my eyes or my arms and tentacles though.”

“Aww, I like your eyes, Orseis. They’re cool.”

The cuttlefish girl grinned. “Thanks, Bel. I can’t see colors, but I’ve been told that my vision is better than what most people have, so I guess that they’re alright.”

The cuttlefish glanced at Bel’s missing eye a frowned. “Ah, um… sorry if that was insensitive. Are, uh, are the other people in Satrap nice like you and your brother?”

Bel shrugged. “Eh… well, I don’t really know. I didn’t get to know very many of them since I was always hiding.”

Bel’s thoughts drifted to Ventas for a moment. “I think that some of them are nice though. And there are way more people in Satrap than here in the Plains, so I don’t think it would be impossible to meet other people who don’t have a problem with tentacles.”

“I hope so,” Orseis sighed. “I need to find a nice guy soon.”

Bel’s eyebrows went up. “Wait, a nice guy? You’re in a rush?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how long I’ll live, but I’m already eight. Actual cuttlefish don’t live that long, so I could hit old age at any time.”

Bel had a vague memory of Daran talking about lifespans at some point, but the ant-girl had stressed how much human ancestry she had, and how long her grandparents had lived. “I guess you don’t know anything about your grandparents?”

Orseis shrugged her tentacles.

Flann stirred.

“Oh, sorry Flann, are we keeping you up?”

“Nah, you young’uns don’t mind me. You know, there are a few creatures that have some longevity and health abilities in the Plains. Most people aren’t interested since they’d rather improve their health by advancing their cores and they’re a bit of a drain on your core space, but back when we all had shorter lifespans it was pretty common to get those abilities.”

Orseis perked up. “Really? Could you tell me about them?”

“Sure, sure,” the old fox grinned. “My family taught me about this stuff when I was just a kit, it’s only right I pass it on.”

The fox leaned back with a sigh. “It’s a shame we’re so busy arguing when we could be workin’ together. Me and Jan had hoped that, with the Dark Ravager dead an’ gone, we would all come together.”

He gestured vaguely above them. “Instead we had Hanti putting Cleisthenes up to some nonsense to sink the mission so that she could be put in charge – what a mess.”

“So the tribal alliance has always had these problems?” Bel wondered.

“Never ending,” Flann moaned. “And meanwhile we’ve got entire groups o’ people who are slowly regressin’ to their animal states. It’s beyond stupid; everyone knows we’re all doomed in the long-run.”

His ears flattened sadly. “There just isn’t enough human blood left in us after all those wars.”

Bel frowned. “Really? What about all those matchmakers that Daran talked about? And the Great Swap?”

Flann waved a furry paw. “Too little, too late. Sure, maybe some people will make it through, but for most of us the future generations will either disappear or regress back into something resembling their original animal ancestors.”

“I didn’t realize that things were so dire,” Bel gasped.

“It’s why you guys coming out of the blue wall is such a big deal. I mean, the alliance agreed to do something in only a month; that basically never happens.”

Orseis pointed several tentacles at herself. “And I wouldn’t be down here in this dangerous place if I didn’t think this was important, you know?”

She chuckled and waved a tentacle out at the glowing forest around them. “Not that this floor isn’t beautiful. If I were an enterprising cuttlefish I might sell tickets.”