Outside Influences

Bel woke up and stretched. I don’t know if it’s because nothing woke me up, or if it’s because I finally replaced one of my missing snakes, but I’m feeling fantastic. She breathed in the hot, humid air and released a slow sigh of contentment. She booped the snout of her new snake, pleased with herself.

A snort drew her attention to one of her companions.

“What a wonderful morning,” she greeted Orseis. “Thanks for letting me sleep in!”

The tentacled girl grunted in response. “Hungry.”

“Where’s Flann?”

“Fishing.” Orseis popped to her feet and pulled on Bel’s arm, urging her up. “Now that you’re up we can join him.”

“He’s being careful of the serpents, right?” Bel asked, as she pulled their camouflaged tarp from its stakes so she could return it to her bag. Orseis may have been in a rush, but Bel didn’t want to lose any of their limited supplies.

“More careful than you were with that spirit, volcano girl.”

“Hey! Who hasn’t wanted to be a volcano when – no, wait, that’s the spirit again.”

Bel chewed on her lip. “Huh, Dutcha did warn me about spirits that were too powerful.”

Orseis slapped her forehead with a tentacle. “The crazy spirit? Even she warned you? And you didn’t listen to her!?”

Bel paused, tarp halfway stuffed into a bag. “You know, when you put it like that, it sounds like I was being stupid.”

Bel held up a hand. “But,” she sputtered, “I just don’t feel complete without my snakes. I just needed it – I can’t really explain it, but I just had to catch this one. Just imagine if you lost a tentacle.”

Bel reached up and poked at her new addition. Tired of the frequent prodding, the magma snake snapped at her finger. Bel’s four original snakes took offense: they tussled with the newcomer, making a tangled, hissing mess on her head.

Orseis watched as the four green snakes overwhelmed the new one, wrapping it up and pinning it to Bel’s head in a show of dominance.

Orseis’ eyelids twitched. “Blessed Bargainer, if being around Dutcha is anything like this then I can understand why the elves are fleeing Skotos and coming to the Golden Plains.”

Bel harrumphed. “Hey, we don’t make fun of you for your appetite, don’t make fun of me for my spirit snakes.”

Orseis waved her tentacles in surrender. “I think you do make fun of my appetite though. But speaking of my eating, I can’t handle all of this on an empty stomach. C’mon, maybe we can catch something.”

Bel followed Orseis to the edge of their finger of land and was surprised to see Flann sitting on the edge, a fishing rod in his hands and a smile on his face.

“Where’d you get that, Flann?”

The old fox grinned. “When I heard that there could be a layer of water down here I grabbed my old pole. Me and my grandpa used go fishin’, back when there were still rivers and fish in the Golden Plains.”

“When was that?” Orseis wondered. “The rivers never had any food in them.”

Flann threw a loose clump of moss at her. “You young’uns! You’re not even ten years old, and you’re tellin’ me that the rivers never had fish! Next thing you’ll say that the people of the Plains always spoke the same language!”

“But…” Orseis began, but she trailed off under the old fox’s stare. She sighed with resignation. “Okay, then, tell me more about this wonderful fishing.”

Flann grinned and his tail wagged. “Of course! But first, grab a good rock for clubbin’. And Bel, you grab that net over there.” He nodded as they followed his instructions. “Alright, I got a good feelin’. When I catch something, you grab it in the net and she’ll whack it good.”

Bel eyed the water below them. “You won’t be catching any of those serpents, will you?”

He laughed. “Only the small ones! Now where was I…oh yeah!”

Flann leaned back and closed his eyes, clearly reminiscing about something. Used to his behavior by now, Bel sat down and settled in for a long wait. Much to her amusement, Orseis stared at the point where the fishing line disappeared into the mist over the water’s surface. The semi-cuttlefish was practically drooling over the thought of a meal.

“So,” Flann began, “people used to rely upon spirits to refill the waters, drawing in the salty brine of the ocean and separatin’ it out to fill our ponds with freshwater and our food with flavor. Other spirits would do what spirits do naturally, causin’ all sorts of storms and squalls on their own.”

He pointed at the water, which flowed between two fingers of rock a strong stone’s throw across. “Rivers this size weren’t uncommon back then, and plenty of them ran ten foxes deep. We had a name for the big river back then. It was…hmm…”

Flann rocked back and forth for a moment. “Ah, we called it the Spear, because it split the Plains like a spear through a fish. Anyway, there were maybe ten decent rivers back then, and we foxes shared one with the meerkats and the scorpions.”

Flann leaned back and grinned. “That was where I first met Jan, actually. Silly meerkat had managed to walk right into the river!” Flann’s ears twitched with excitement and his eyes unfocused as he got lost in the memory.

Orseis’s stomach growled. Bel watched with concern as the girl leaned farther over the water, her eyes large and desperate.

Bel almost laughed when Flann’s nose twitched at her inattention. After a brief pause, he snorted and resumed his rambling.

“O’ course the meerkats didn’t trust us, so, other than Jan fallin’ in, they mostly lived on the far side. And of course nobody trusted the scorpions. Most of them ended up with the Ravager in the end, so it was the smart thing to do, although some of them got blamed for stuff they weren’t part of.”

Bel wondered if that was why Seth was so awkward around people. The quiet scorpion boy saved her during an attack by the Dark Ravager’s people, and as far as Bel could tell he got along with James and Beth, but he hardly ever opened his mouth. Not that she could do anything about it from underground, but maybe she could ask James to make sure that he had friends.

“Speakin’ of the Ravager, he’d already been hunting the spirits for a long time when I was a boy. We didn’t realize the effects at first, but, sure enough, once they finished disappearin’ the rains went with ’em. But back when there were rains, my grandad used to–”

“Ah!” Orseis shouted. “It’s something! It’s by the line! Catch it, catch it!”

Flann burst out laughing. “You just have to be patient! Ya can’t make somethin’ bite!”

He twitched his line a few times, trying to entice whatever was in the water below.

“What are you using for bait anyway?” Bel asked.

“Worms in the rocks,” he replied. “Found some crawling on you in the night.”

Bel gagged a bit and started wiping off her body with one of her hands.

Flann’s eyes popped open and he hopped to his feet. He jerked on his pole and started reeling. “I’ve got it!”

Orseis hopped from foot to foot as he pulled up his catch, and even Bel felt a bit of excitement – at least until a round lump emerged from the mist.

“Is that a giant bug?” she asked.

“Net it, net it!” Orseis demanded, undeterred.

Bel reached out with the net and caught the creature, which was stubbornly holding onto a tough, thick segment of worm that Flann had affixed to his hook. She pulled the netted creature closer. It wasn’t bothered by the situation and stubbornly worked on the worm with its mouthparts, refusing to let go. It was big and fat, far plumper than the crabs that they’d eaten before, but, Bel thought, far less appetizing. She put it down on the rocks, uncertain if she was hungry enough to eat the pale, hard shelled, many legged thing. Its four antenna waved around, and Bel shuddered when she thought of them wriggling in her stomach.

Orseis smashed her stone down on its head with a cry of glee. “Yes! Breakfast!”

Bel’s lips curled in disgust. Its blood wasn’t even red; instead, it was a bright shade of blue.

“Now I’ll just cook it up, and we’ll–” Flann stopped mid-sentence as Orseis ripped the isopod in half with a powerful flex of her tentacles before shoving half of it directly into her face. Blue blood smeared everywhere.

Bel grinned at the fox. “She seems hungry. Looks like you’ll have to catch more of them.”

Bel rolled her eyes as Flann grumbled, but he slipped a new segment of worm onto his hook before tossing it back in.

Bel turned to gaze at the Pillar that Supported the World. It was still dripping impressive amounts of magma, the same as the last time she’d looked. A little voice in her head told her to rush straight to it, and kill anything that tried to stop her.

She ignored it – clearly the little magma snake had overinflated opinions of its own capabilities that were intruding into her own thoughts.

“Is it really fishing if you aren’t catching fish?”

Flann slapped his knee as he chortled. “Ah, you young’uns are so funny. Course it’s fishin.”

Orseis finished the isopod and tossed its empty shell back into the water. “Oh! Should I have shared that?” Orseis asked, eyes wide. “Sorry, I was just so hungry,” she apologized.

Bel and Flann waved the girl off.

Bel smiled at Orseis’ guilty look as the girl leaned over the edge of the cliff. Then Orseis’ face shifted to a look of excitement.

“Hey guys,” she asked, “do you like crayfish? Because we’ve got a swarm of them climbing up the cliff.”

Flann didn’t hesitate, quickly jamming his pole into a crack in the rock slab and summoning a pair of fiery orbs to his hands. Bel whipped her short sword out of her sheath just as the first crayfish cleared the lip of the cliff. Before she could step towards it though, it launched a narrow beam of water at her from one of its claws.

Bel blocked the water instinctively, quickly using minor body modification to further strengthen her already toughened integument. The beam of water didn’t slice through her, but it stung like hell where it hit. Bel dove to the ground to evade multiple incoming attacks, coating herself in the thick moss that covered most of the ground but ducking out of the crayfishes lines of sight.

While they were busy attacking Bel, Orseis used their distraction to get close and grab three of the little crayfish in her tentacles. Before she could finish them off she was hit by multiple beams. She yelped with pain, and hurled her caught crayfish at some of her attackers.

Then Flann summoned an incredible bonfire that crisped all of the crayfish that had cleared the cliff. Bel breathed a sigh of relief, and rubbed at her arms where bright, red lines were forming where she’d been hit. She sucked her breath back in when a second group of crayfish completed the climb, their pincers clacking with menace.

She glared at them this time, freezing them before they could attack, and then rushed in with her sword. Some of Orseis arm tentacles were wrapped limply around her body, but she still rushed forward with Bel to finish off the newcomers. The assault wasn’t over though – another pair climbed up behind the second group. Bel covered her face to block any attacks at her eyes, but the expected assault didn’t come. Surprised, she looked up to see the crayfish twitching helplessly in mid-air.

Did the moss catch them?

Bel’s mind struggled to understand the scene before she realized that it was Orseis who had caught them in her tentacles.

“Did you just go invisible?” she asked, surprised.

Orseis grinned as she crushed the little crayfish bodies. “Not invisible, but most of my upper body can still change color and texture. It’s sometimes useful in a fight if I’m moving slowly.”

“Put yer damn shirt back on!” Flann yelled. “Don’t you have any sense?”

Bel’s eyes widened as she saw the incensed fox. His whiskers were twitching with shock and distress. “Didn’t your parents ever teach ya to be decent around other folks?”

Orseis stood tall and proud with her tentacles braced on her hips. “Never met ’em. Didn’t I already tell you that?”

Flann tossed her cloak to her. “I’ve a mind to adopt you myself jus’ so I can give you a good talkin’ to.” He turned around and started collected the crayfish, his tail still swishing with agitation. “Young’uns these days, I swear,” he muttered to himself.

Bel picked up one of the limp miniature lobsters and peered into its beady eyes. “Say, do you think these things have any good abilities? Shooting things with beams of water doesn’t sound bad.”