Outside Influences

Bel woke up from her nap when Orseis started screaming.

“What the hell? I fell asleep and you left me there? Are you crazy?” Orseis writhed around in the narrow window tunnel, turning so she could face Bel and wave her tentacles angrily. The skin on her face flashed red and bands of darkness swept over her in an agitated pattern.

“Do you control your color consciously? Or are they like when humans flush?”

“They’re–don’t change the subject!”

Bel held up her hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. Your tentacles looked secure, so I assumed that was how cuttlefish sleep.”

“Cuttlefish didn’t evolve to sleep on the edge of cliffs, Bel!”

“Well, I thought that you needed some sleep. So did I, honestly. Do you really want to drop into that forest and then have to look for a safe place to sleep?”

Orseis flicked a tentacle back at the opening. “Don’t talk like this was a safe place!”

Bel opened her mouth to respond, but Orseis began pointing frantically over Bel’s shoulder. She turned around to see an angry face staring back from the end of the tunnel.

“I’ve finally found you unwelcome pests! Travel without a token is forbidden! Come out of there and submit yourself to the justice of the Asura!”

Bel frowned and turned back to her companion. “Time to go.”

Orseis nodded and began checking the straps of her back pack.

Bel shimmied back to the end of the tunnel, ignoring the continuing ranging of the tower guard.

“Do you think you can hold onto my back? And release the parachute without letting me go?”

Orseis quickly nodded. “Sure, six tentacles, plenty of grip. Just keep your snakes out of my face.”

Spurred on by the double-headed man’s yelling, the two of them quickly completed what would have otherwise been an awkward and embarrassing feat of gymnastics without a moment of hesitation.

“Failure to comply will result in a permanent and multi-generational ban!”

“May your afterlife be unfulfilling!” Bel retorted before launching herself and Orseis from the pillar.

They rushed freely through the air for a few seconds before the parachute abruptly caught the wind and jerked them backwards. Bel’s throat constricted when she felt Orseis’ tentacles straining, but she released a sigh of relief as their motion stabilized.

“Get these snakes outta my face,” Orseis whined.

Bel reached up and pulled her snakes forward. She gave them a stern look. You all behave, she thought forcefully.

They flicked their tongues in response; Bel couldn’t tell if they cared, or even if they had understood.

“What language was that?” Orseis asked.

“Huh? Oh, with the guy?” Bel tilted her head. “Now that I think about it, I don’t know.”

“But you responded to him, right?”

“Sure. I wished that his afterlife would be unfulfilling.”

“That’s pretty tame.”

Bel scrunched her face with distaste. “I meant to say ‘go to hell’, but those were the words that came out.”

She tilted her head in thought. “Or that was the meaning. I can’t actually remember what I said.”

“So wait, to be clear, whatever language he was using, and that you responded with–you don’t actually know it?”

Bel nodded, releasing her snakes. “Yup. Maybe it’s a language I used to speak when I was so young that I can’t remember it?” She twisted slightly. “What do you think?”

She froze as the words left her mouth. There was someone keeping pace with them, studying them as they slowly fell. Large, lustrous white feathers, golden eyes, and a hooked yellow beak, but also human arms, clothes, and a spear clutched between his hands.

“We’ve got company,” she murmured.

“We’ve got what? Who–oh.” Orseis went quiet. “I take it back Bel, I’m glad I got to rest.”

“You have finally become aware of my presence,” the bird-man noted. His voice was deep and resonant, but his tone was full of derision. “You seem like simple vagrants, yet a second look reveals equipment far beyond your worth.”

Bel traced his gaze and was unsurprised when she realized that he was talking about the armor she’d been gifted by Kjar.

“What’s he saying?” Orseis asked.

“I think he wants my armor,” Bel replied dryly. “I’d sooner test my glare on him.”

“Eh, maybe hold off on that. He may have an entire flock waiting nearby.”

They all glared at one another in silence for a few heartbeats. The wind whistled in Bel’s ears as she looked around.

“Looks like it’ll take a while for us to reach the bottom,” she realized. “I wonder if he’s going to let us land?”

The bird man seemed to be in no hurry, simply examining their parachute with interest.

“Why don’t you try talking to him?” Orseis suggested. “Like with the guy in the pillar. Maybe the words will come back to you if you try to practice saying them.”

Bel nodded. “Worth a shot.”

She looked at the bird man and though “who are you?” No voice left her mouth though.

“Well?” Orseis prompted.

“I’m working on it. It’s like trying to sneeze when you don’t have to.”

“Try harder.”

Bel sighed. If it’s a language that I used to speak… oh, maybe it’s the language that Kjar and Lempo speak?

Bel tried to remember Kjar’s voice from her rescue in the Dark Ravager’s pyramid. She opened her mouth, preparing to the bird man who he was and what he wanted.

“What manner of mortal dares confront us?” she snarled. “And what purpose is served by your covetous looks?”

Ah, that wasn’t really what I meant to say or how I meant to say it. Wait, how can I understand what I’m saying but not know that I’m about to say?

The bird man’s pupils widened. Then he looked at her face and his eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Ah, you must be a child of some meddlesome god. Your interference in the land of the Garuda is unwelcome, divine spawn that you may be.”

Bel glanced at Orseis. “From what he said, I think that being daughter of a goddess means that I can speak whatever language we’re using.”

“So you’re communicating?” Orseis asked hopefully.

“Well… I’m mostly just threatening him. Let me see if I can be more polite.”

Bel cleared her throat and thought of Kjar’s voice again. “What nonsense must fill your head that you utter baseless accusations,” she replied hotly. “We care not for you bird people or whatever place you call home, but should you unjustly provoke me I will burn your world to cinder.”

Maybe thinking about how Kjar spoke is the wrong thing to do.

The bird man laughed. “Your divine parent must have stuffed your ego overfull that you speak such nonsense. I’ll not twitch a feather to interfere, yet I would wager that you’ll be dead within minutes of breaching the forest canopy. Tell me, would your divine parent hold a grudge if I picked that fine piece of armor from your cooling corpse?”

Well, at least he doesn’t want to make my parents angry. Thinking of Kjar clearly isn’t working; how about Lempo?

“You and your stagnant people are only worth the fertilizer birthed from your decaying corpses. Bother me not.”

Bel cringed. Creepy! Why is everything about my mom so creepy?

The man’s hands tightened around his spear. “You are unwelcome here, godchild. I will not interfere–it is not my place–but the hunting shadow that prowls these lands will end you quickly.”

Bel thought long and hard before answering, almost responding several different ways until she hit upon a feeling of a short sentence.

“What?”

The man laughed. “Some other god’s spawn has beaten you here. Even now, it patrols the land below, hunting down the remnants of the Dark Ravager’s people.”

He smirked. “Perhaps you could be so kind as to do us a favor and murder one another?”

Bel chewed on her lip, trying to find a non-threatening way to ask a question. Before she could though, the man tilted slightly and began to draw away. “I’ll be back soon for that fine piece of armor.”

He made a gesture that Bel assumed was rude before rolling to the side and gliding away after a few powerful flaps of his wings.

“I’m guessing that we’re not going to be friends?” Orseis asked.

“Nope,” Bel replied without remorse. “He was an asshole anyway. He wants to take my armor from my once I’m dead.”

“Oh? But he didn’t want to try to do the dead himself?”

“I think he didn’t want to anger my parents. He seemed pretty sure that we would die once we get into the forest.”

Bel looked down. They were close to the unbroken sea of trees now, but still a while away.

“Aren’t we falling really slowly?” she asked.

Orseis shrugged her tentacles. “I haven’t been paying attention. Isn’t that just a trick of the mind? Some of these trees are so huge that my mind insisted that we had to be closer for them to look so large.”

Bel looked at the closest trees as she sped past. Then she shook her head.

“Wait, wait, the bird man also mentioned someone down there who was hunting down the Dark Ravager’s cultists.”

“Really?” Orseis chirped excitedly. “Maybe they’ll want to help us out?”

“That would be nice. He was pretty sure that we would get into a fight though.”

Orseis shrugged. “Hah! What does he know?”

Bel grit her teeth. “How to land. That’s what he knows. We’re going kind of fast, and there’s no open areas or water to aim for.”

Orseis was quiet as she looked around. “Huh.”

A few leaves from the highest branches slapped against Bel’s bare feet. She quickly pulled her legs up, but their height was dropping so quickly that a moment later her knees were under assault.

Then they scraped against the side of an exceptionally tall tree and went spinning. Her snakes squeezed around her head in a hissing ball that left her nearly blind to her surroundings and she flailed for Orseis tentacles, desperate to have something to hold on to.

Something struck her in the gut, bending her in two. Her head slammed into something heavy and she saw a night sky's worth of stars. Bel spun like a pinwheel, and suddenly she and Orseis were no longer together. Bel plunged in a free fall, punching through multiple layers of scratching branches. Her hand slapped against something and she instinctively grabbed on while simultaneously modifying her arm to have sharper nails for grasping onto the thick bark.

Bel’s arm jerked over her head and she grabbed ahold of a tree limb, wrenching her shoulder but halting her descent.

Bel whimpered in pain as she hung by her injured arm, swaying back and forth.

She grit her teeth and opened her eyes, ready to take in whatever horrible situation she’d gotten herself into. Two large, round eyes peered back at her from the trunk of a tree.

Bel blinked a few times, making sure her vision was clear. The tree had eyes.

She looked up and down the trunk, wondering if her head trauma was making her see things that weren't there.

The tree had a hand, and it had caught ahold of her as she had tried to catch ahold of it.

“Hi there,” she greeted it. She tried waving with her free hand, but that made her sway more violently.

When her motion slowed enough that she wasn’t in incredible pain she smiled sheepishly. “So, do you speak?”

The tree’s eyes drooped. It looked like it was about to fall back asleep.

“Oh, no no no, wait, can you put me down before you do that?”

Bel's new, woody snake hissed quietly, clearly chastising the much larger spirit.

The tree’s eyes opened again–just a little bit–and with a great creaking of its wooden limb it lowered her the remaining thirty or so strides to the ground.

Bel’s feet happily sank into the soft soil. “Thanks a bunch!”

The tree didn’t respond. It just closed its eyes and went back to being a tree.

Bel had seen a few spirits on the previous layers–the little magma spirit that she's put on her head, and a few others that the dhvaras were bossing around–but if even a fraction of the trees were spirits then the fourth layer had far more spirits than the earlier layers.

Did the Dark Ravager not harvest the spirits on this level? Or was he still in the middle of that when his people found me?

It was an interesting thought, but she wasn’t in such a leisurely situation that she had time to think about it. She looked in every direction, each one more choked with plant life than the last.

“If I were a tentacle girl, which way would I go?”

Bel spun slowly in place, looking for a sign of someone other than herself smashing through the trees.

Her search bore unexpected fruit when she heard Orseis’ shouts of anger and rage.

“Perfect! If she’s still angry then things can’t be so bad.”

Bel quickly set off towards her wayward companion at an urgent run.