Outside Influences

Bel blinked at the divine figure as her mind struggled to catch up. The cave seemed muted and hazy, the sounds around her muted as though she’d been plunged under water. Only the glowing figure of Lempo, goddess of change and upheaval, was clear in Bel’s vision.

“H–hi, mom,” Bel stammered. “Where am I?”

“You are lying on the dirt,” the goddess replied wryly. “I haven’t taken you anywhere – it isn’t allowed.” Lempo frowned.

“There are plenty of bothersome rules like that,” she huffed. “The other deities do not like it when I change things. I think they are too skittish.”

Lempo sighed dramatically, a cloud of colors escaping upon her breath and spinning dramatically through the air.

Bel’s snakes flicked out their tongues, tasting the air as Bel took a few moments to gather her thoughts. “So if I’m still on the mountain how am I seeing you? How are we talking?”

“Drugs,” Lempo replied cheerily. “The little green people are really into them. I’m not as involved as some of the other deities, but nothing changes a person as quickly as a good dose of drugs so of course they’re a good way to reach me.”

Lempo grinned. “Dutcha is a fan of drugs too, just so you know. It is difficult to find something that would unbalance her any more than she is already though, and she has already been banned from the gardens of every god of the harvest. She was getting quite desperate to escape the oppressive rules of the divine world.”

Bel squinted, struggling to decide if her mother was pulling some kind of horrible god humor or if the spirit of chaos really went around destroying the gardens of the gods on drug-fueled benders.

“Wait, really? Did–no, wait, a minute, I’m lying on the ground, high out of my mind? Surrounded by scrattes?”

Lempo’s hair snaked through the air as she laughed. “Not out of your mind. You’d need something a little stronger for that. No, you’re just hallucinating a bit.”

“So is this real?”

“Of course.” Lempo turned serious. “And while you’re still hallucinating, let’s go over some things.”

Bel’s eyebrows rose at Lempo’s sudden turn to the serious.

“You’ve been going too slowly,” her goddess-mother scolded. “So I’m going to get you to help these green people out. They’ll help you in return. That’s nice, isn’t it? A very human thing to do?”

“They aren’t human though,” Bel objected.

Lempo waved an arm and Bel couldn’t help but notice that she had a few too many fingers on her hand. “Pretty close. Change a few of the building blocks and you’d arrive at just about the same thing. They even have the same number of limbs.”

“Uh, sure.” Bel wondered what Lempo would consider “pretty far” if the scrattes were “pretty close”, but she didn’t ask. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t enjoy the answer.

“So, am I safe? Is Orseis okay?”

Lempo nodded. “Stop worrying so much. Unfortunately, the effects will only last for so long, so we won’t get to spend much more time together.”

The goddess drifted closer and looked Bel up and down. “I’m rather jealous that Dutcha and Kjar got to visit in person, you know. It’s stifling being separated from my instrument of change.”

Bel’s eyes narrowed. “Is that all you think of me? Just a tool to…”

Lempo frowned angrily at her. Seeing the annoyance on the powerful goddess’ face reminded Bel that the person she was talking to was dangerous enough to worry the other gods.

“Of course I think of you as a spawn of my ethereal flesh,” Lempo refuted.

The goddess pursed her lips. “Daughter. Daughter, that’s the concept. Of course I think of you as my daughter. Is it not right for a parent to have expectations for their child?”

“I don’t…I mean, maybe?”

Bel couldn’t help thinking that other parents didn’t expect their children to go around slaying demigods, but she didn’t say it out loud.

Lempo nodded. “Of course, if you decided to do things differently I suppose that I could not fault you – that would be my nature, at least. I must warn you that I will insist on accomplishing my goals even without your help though. Kjar thinks that the destruction would cause you great unhappiness.”

Bel winced. “Yeah, I heard something about that.”

Lempo nodded. “So you will help, then? Excellent. You should hurry though – Technis will be accelerating his plans, so you must reach him soon.”

Lempo looked her up and down. “Kjar should have given you something more than just some armor. Perhaps you’ll need to bring some help.”

“I’m not a fan of scrattes. I don’t suppose I have another option?” Bel asked, timidly.

Lempo rolled her eyes. “Your friend – the tentacled one. Tell her…”

Lempo hummed for a moment. Eyes burst open on her flesh and gyrated madly. Each pupil darted back and forth until a hundred eyes locked onto the same point in the distance. A smile broke out on Lempo’s face.

“I can see an interesting future. Ask her if she is interested in journeying to the Old World, to a land overflowing with humans.”

“You can send her there? Wait, can you even–”

Lempo ignored Bel, and her eyes resumed their manic spinning, searching for something else.

“Ah,” the goddess exclaimed with satisfaction. “Of course. Seek out the people who I used as your template. Some gorgon would make an excellent addition to your group.”

Bel tried to stamp her foot with frustration, but only succeeded in kicking the air. She realized with a start that she was lying on her back on the ground, staring up at the glowing ceiling of the third layer.

“And there it goes,” lamented the now disembodied voice of Lempo. “Ah,” she rushed to add, “Kjar told me to let you know that I am pleased with you as an individual, despite your limitations as a mostly flesh and blood mortal. You are a good daughter, even if you don’t try to talk to me very often.”

“How would I do that?” Bel croaked. “Take more drugs?”

She stared blearily at a charred blob: the scratte’s effigy, she realized, slowly turning to ash out as it finished burning.

So weird, she thought. Everything keeps getting weirder. Compared to her relatively peaceful time hiding in the woods of Satrap with Beth and James her life events were growing increasingly more chaotic.

Bel loved it. She was certain that James would scold her if she said it out loud, but she loved that she didn’t know what each day would bring.

“What’s so great?” a grumpy voice asked. “Was that burning wood that good?”

Bel turned her head to look at the speaker and realized that she had a splitting headache.

“Urgh,” she groaned.

“Don’t ‘urgh’ me,” Orseis complained. “Can you hear me now? Do you know what’s going on? We’re surrounded by scrattes, but they aren’t attacking, and then one of them shoved a thing in your face and you started talking funny.”

Bel turned her head – slowly – to look at Orseis. Then she slowly turned her head to look at the scrattes.

“Oh, don’t look,” Orseis warned. “They’re busy laying eggs in the dhvaras’ corpses.”

“The what? Wait, eggs?” Bel gasped.

Orseis shrugged. “Well, they could be seeds. The scrattes are plants, right? Since they’re green and covered in roots?”

Curiosity quickly overpowered her and Bel looked. Her eyes widened. Her hand clapped over her mouth as her stomach heaved.

“I warned you,” Orseis grumbled.

Bel decided to stare at the ground for a little while. “What did you call the tall people? Dwaraf?”

“Dhvaras. I had some time to think, and I remembered hearing stories of tall, slender demons who come out of the ground when someone burrows too far underground.”

“Why didn’t you remember something important like that beforehand?” Bel huffed.

Orseis waved a tentacle dismissively. “I mean, it’s not like cuttlefish burrow, right?”

Before Bel could come up with a witty response, the scratte who had been carrying her mother’s symbol wandered back to them, making awful shrieking noises the entire time.

He – or she, Bel couldn’t tell – waved for the two of them to follow. The creature began shrieking with increasing urgency when they didn’t immediately get up.

“Crows, I wish they wouldn’t speak,” Bel complained as she rose to unsteady feet. Orseis reached out to lend her a tentacle to lean on.

“You can’t understand them? I thought you were speaking to them before.”

Bel shook her head. “No, I was… well, I was speaking to my mom, I think. To Lempo.”

Orseis narrowed her eyes. “Is that how it works? You inhale something weird and talk to a goddess?”

Bel shrugged helplessly. “I don’t really know. Oh, that reminds me, Lempo told me to ask you if you wanted to go to the human world. I don’t know what she meant by it though.”

Orseis’ eyes widened. “What, really? Can she send me there?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”

I wish I hadn’t said anything.

Orseis wouldn’t stop asking about James’ world after Bel brought it up. At first she went on and on asking how Lempo could get her there, but she soon switched to asking nonstop questions about what it would be like to live there. Bel couldn’t even answer most of what she asked.

She should have really talked to James about this stuff, Bel sighed internally. Well, I guess she didn’t think she could get there before I passed along Lempo’s words.

Bel glanced at Orseis. The girl’s voice had finally been worn out from the caustic air and now she was walking silently, her eyes glazed over as she became lost in her own strange fantasies.

I hope my mom wasn’t misleading her.

Bel wrung her hands with uncertainty. Maybe I should have tried talking to Lempo before now. I didn’t even know that some scrattes worshipped her.

Bel glanced at the scrattes who were crowding uncomfortably close. They weren’t exactly harmless, but the one that she was thinking of as a shaman had rubbed some sweet smelling ooze onto her and Orseis that seemed to calm the rest of the group.

A few had still tried to nip at Orseis’ tentacles, but the shaman had hit them with a stick. Bel could see why the scrattes hadn’t conquered the layer, despite their greatly outnumbering the dhvaras.

She couldn’t speak with the scrattes, and she wasn’t completely certain that their harsh noises were actual words, but as they wandered the rocky crags that dominated the third layer their destination had eventually become clear. Upon climbing to the bottom of the jagged peak they turned towards the pillar that supported the world and walked in an almost straight line straight towards it.

Progress was slow. The scrattes seemed completely incapable of planning efficient routes and they were forced to leap over several streams of hissing lava along the way. Scrattes fell in frequently, instantly turning into wailing balls of fiery misery. The only reaction from the other scrattes was to shove and roll large rocks near to the edge of the lava so that they had slightly shorter distances to jump. The process would repeat until the last scrattes made their way across or had been burned to a crisp.

Now they were approaching a new obstacle – a small encampment of Dhvaras who had made a lean-to of rock up against a large boulder.

Bel pointed to the inclement inevitable encounter and waved her hand to get the shaman’s attention.

“Do you really want to fight them?” she asked, sceptically. “Maybe we should go around?”

She mimed two legs walking away with her fingers.

She looked at the scratte, waiting for a response. The scratte looked at her and then looked ahead, squinting like someone’s near-blind grandmother as it peered into the distance. Then it shrugged, and resumed walking.

“Are you dumb, or just nearsighted?” Bel asked rhetorically.

The scratte opened its mouth a let out a noise like two rocks scraping together.

Bel sighed before bending down to pick up a hefty, hand-sized rock. “Well, looks like we’re fighting.”

“Finally,” Orseis replied hoarsely, “this was getting boring.”

Bel looked at her companion with worry. “Are you okay Orseis?”

“No,” she moaned. “I’m shriveling up.”

Bel frowned. “Someone has to have water. Maybe I can ask–”

The scrattes chose that moment to shriek out a challenge to the small encampment. The dhvaras bellowed back, hefting long spears and wicked-looking swords longer than Bel was tall.

“Oh good,” Bel mumbled.

As intimidating as slender demons were, there were only four of them in the encampment compared to the thirty or so scrattes charging them. Bel jogged along behind the group, her feelings about taking sides mixed.

On the one hand, the scrattes worship my mother and aren’t trying to eat us at the moment. The dhvaras that I’ve seen so far have been terrible, but do I really know that all of them are?

She couldn’t bring herself to feel any bloodlust for the battle, so she hung back with her dehydrated companion, her guilty conscience steering her eye away from the upcoming carnage. It was thanks to her inattention that she noticed a fifth member of the encampment striding his way up the slope from a nearby channel of lava.

He seemed particularly tall and unkempt: scorch marks marred the surface of his metal armor and his beard had patches burnt away, revealing a bit of pale chin and a mouth full of dark teeth. In one hand he wielded a tall staff and in the other he pulled on a long chain.

Bel’s eye traced the links down to the lava river where they dipped out of sight. The figure paused for a moment upon seeing the charging scrattes before tugging on the chain. The first links to emerge from the lava were glowing with heat, but still seemed solid enough for the tall man to haul upon whatever was attached to the other side. Bel watched with a wide eye as a creature of stone slowly pulled itself from the molten river.

The horns emerged first, two thick, curving arcs of hissing stone that dripped molten droplets as they shook about. A face followed, reminding Bel of some sort of bear, but twice as large. The body fully emerged with a spring from the creature’s hind legs that launched a wave of lava over the shore. It shook itself like a wet mammal, tossing deadly projectiles of glowing stone in a circle around it.

The dhvaras held up a small shield to protect his face, but Bel could immediately see how its armor and beard had gotten into their current unkempt states. Once the rain of molten stones died down he pointed his staff at the oncoming scrattes.

Bel clenched her teeth. She didn’t particularly like the scrattes, but she couldn’t imagine things going well for her and Orseis once they were overrun by the giant, horned magma bear.

So much for my pathetic attempt at morality. Crows, James is going to make me feel like shit about this later, I just know it.

She increased her pace, staring at the staff-wielder until her movement caught his attention. When she was around fifty strides away he glanced at her and she glared. His body locked up just as the molten bear strode forward. The force on the chain yanked him off of his feet. The bear turned and stared at its prone controller, who was now lying face down in one of its smoldering footprints.

Bel didn’t expect her surprise attack to finish the dhvaras off, but it did give her a moment to figure out what to do about the bear. She craned her head up to look it in its glowing eyes.

Blood and offal, it’s tall.

The bear rumbled deep in its throat. It pushed down with its front paws with enough force the crack the ground beneath them and rose up onto its back legs, quickly doubling its height. It towered over her like a small, burning mountain.

“I don’t suppose you want to talk about it?” she asked hopefully.