Outside Influences

Bel pushed herself to her feet and threw her dagger at the birdman’s head. Her tooth-turned-weapon was poorly weighted and wouldn’t have done much damage, but she counted on the birdman instinctively protecting his eyes anyway. As she wanted, the birdman swatted her weapon aside and glanced at her angrily. Bel took the opportunity to pull all of the loose energy her core and funnel it through an overpowered glare.

The birdman’s wings stuttered for a moment, but he didn’t drop far enough for Orseis to reach the ground. He did give up on stabbing her though – he executed a flapping pirouette that ended with a powerful kick instead. Orseis whirled like a cyclone of tentacles and dismay as she was tossed away and slammed into a nearby tree. Her tentacles weakly suckered onto the surface and she rolled down the bark, but Bel could tell that Orseis’ limbs were acting purely on reflex: the girl had been knocked out cold.

The birdman dismissed the tentacled girl with a cruel sneer and locked his eyes onto Bel. His birght red crest puffed up with challege and he pointed his spear tip at her. He flapped his wings once before folding them, diving at her, spear first, his face creased with anger… and then his eyes flicked to her side.

Bel immediately threw herself clear of whatever he’d seen. Her quick reflexes were barely enough to dodge a sharp scale that cut through the space that she’d just occupied. Bel nearly tripped over the lizardman cultist as she danced away. The new attacker followed up with a spray of pebbles that zipped through the air like angry hornets. The cultist was punctured in multiple places as the rocks tore through him, and a painful squawk told Bel that the birdman had been moving too quickly to avoid the assault.

She took partial cover behind a nearby rock. Her snakes roiled with agitation as she stared into the forest. Her eyes widened as a familiar figure came into view, bathed in the red glow of Kjar’s judgement.

“Crystal?” she hesitated. “I thought you died?”

Bel quickly realized that sharp nails she’d been seeing were the overlapping plates that covered Crystal’s back. Crystal had been pulling them off and throwing them, giving her a half-plucked, mangy appearance. She was also clearly dead, and her corpse had been turned into one of Technis’ patchwork people. Her tail had been lengthened and fitted with spikes, strange marks had been written into her skin, and her eyes glowed with a disturbing yellow-green light. Two holsters of rods swung at her hips, and she had a rod each in two of her hands. She also had a third forearm attached to one of her elbows, and her third hand wielded a short and wickedly curved knife.

“Is that my sister’s arm? What the–”

Bel’s confused and outraged tirade was interrupted by a wind whip that formed from the tip of one of Crystal’s wands. She dove behind the rock, and a spray of pebbles chipped away from it confirmed that the attack was powerful enough to cut her to pieces.

Right, Crystal was dangerous even before Technis messed with her. Bel thought back to her last encounter with a patchwork person, her futile fight with Klang in the caves before the Barrier. I’m stronger now, sure, but not that much stronger. And there’s no Ventas to save me this time – not that I want someone sacrificing themself for me again, she thought bitterly.

A grunt of effort from the birdman reminded Bel that Crystal wasn’t her only problem. She glanced at the troublemaker and saw that he’d drawn his arm back. Her eyes widened as his arm whipped forward and he threw his spear. She whipped her head the other way to follow the path of the weapon as it spun like a drill on its way to Crystal.

If the weapon’s divine nature made it anything like her armor, Bel expect it to easily go straight through Crystal. The patchwork woman had other plans though – she thumped a rounded bulge on her shoulder, summoning a blue barrier around her body. The spear slid around Technis’ shield and embedded itself in a tree down to the butt.

The birdman’s eyes widened in shock, but he quickly held out his hand. The spear dissolved into red mist and flowed back to him.

Ah, I want that, Bel though reflexively.

Crystal was less impressed by the special effects. Rather than waiting around for the spear to return to its owner she immediately began to run. Not towards the birdman though, she was heading straight towards Bel.

Why me? Bel thought forlornly. Is it because I’m closer?

Bel decided that discretion was the better part of valor and also began to run: straight towards the birdman. With any luck, she could get the two of them to fight it out.

“You honor-less wench!” he snarled.

Bel channeled her inner Kjar to speak in the divine tongue. “An unremarkable death awaits the unrepentant!” she shouted back.

The birdman’s eyes widened. His feather’s puffed and he squawked incoherently.

Good, good. All according to–

The rocks beneath her feet leaped up, tripping Bel and sending her tumbling amongst the jagged shards of the large boulder. That saved her from the spear that cut through the air above her, though, so she felt lucky. Bel looked at her legs to see that they’d become entangled in a sheath of rocks, trapping her. Bel glanced back to she another one of Crystal’s wands glowing with power.

Screw me, she cursed. She quickly liquified the rocks around her legs, but Crystal was nearly upon her. The fingers on Beth’s stolen arm wiggled and Crystal was coated in darkness. Then she split into five shadowy figures.

Great, it stole my sister’s abilities too.

Bel tracked the movements of the small pebbles around the clones’ feet and moved away from the real one. She forgot about the birdman though, and was reminded of him when he kicked her in the back.

“Die,” the birdman commanded.

Bel desperately pivoted as she stumbled helplessly towards the real Crystal, but the pathwork woman spun her body, lashing out with her thick, thagomized tail. The barbs crashed into Bel’s body and skid off of Kjar’s armor, leaving small, glowing scratches in their wake. The barbs didn’t cut into her, but the force of the attack sent Bel flying back towards the woods.

She found herself once again staring blindly into the sky, pinpricks of light swirling around her head.

For a few precious heartbeats she was confused, but the sound of fighting and a surge of adrenaline brought some reason back to her thoughts. Get up, she urged her body. Let’s go! She twitched awkwardly, then managed to roll over.

Her body heaved and she convulsively vomited, voiding her stomach and then coughing up bits of blood.

Probably fine, she hoped.

She grimaced as she forced her head up, searching for the fighters. Crystal and the birdman were locked in a heated struggle, their attacks like lighting flashing through the heavens. The birdman was holding his own, but Bel knew that meant he was losing. The patchwork people didn’t tire, they were unfazed by pain and fatigue, and they wouldn’t stop until they’d carried out their instructions. The birdman was as good as dead, his fate sealed when he decided to attack her instead of staying away.

All because he was too greedy and wanted my armor.

She glanced at his spear, its plain haft and functional blade still looking flawless as he used them to parry and counterstrike Crystal’s onslaught. Kjar forgive me, but I’m greedy too. I’m just not conceited enough to think I’d survive long enough to use it.

Bel forced herself to her feet and stumbled towards Orseis. A few steps in, she came across the scattered remains of the lizardman cultist. She paused only for a moment to pull the essence from his core, the fresh infusion of energy lifting her another threshold and clearing her head slightly.

There was a loud explosion behind her, and a rain of burning debris showered the area, knocking Bel to her knees. Standing seemed hard, so she crawled, sparing a quick glance back at the fighting only when she had nearly reached Orseis’ limp form.

Bel could tell that the birdman was growing increasing desperate. His feathers were sticking out in every direction and there were obvious wounds across his body, but he launched new attacks at a frenetic pace; he unleashed a barrage of flaming swipes with his taloned legs, a blast of sound from his mouth that was loud enough to pulverize rock, and stabbed his divine weapon faster than Bel’s eyes could track.

Crystal weathered it all, dead-eyed and expressionless. Her scales deflected his talons, she summoned sheets of stone to block his sonic attacks, and her miniature Barrier protected her from his spear.

Then Bel saw Crystal use her curved knife to cut a thin slash into the bird man’s legs during one of his desperate kicks.

Ah, there’s no way he isn’t poisoned now.

Bel crawled to Orseis and inspected her companion. She was still out cold, but Bel could still see her chest rising and falling. Bel grabbed the smaller girl and pulled her over one of her shoulders. Her tentacles tangled with Bel’s feet, so she wrapped them around her shoulders and hoisted Orseis by tucking her legs under her arms instead. Bel hunched over to keep her friend in place and desperately ran to the hole that Nebamon had uncovered.

The birdman saw her running, but by now Crystal had forced him back to the other side of the rocky clearing. He screamed at her with impotent rage. “You coward! Wretched creature of a worthless god! How dare–”

The birdman’s verbal assault was cut off by a loud explosion of rock, but Bel was too busy running for her life to look back. She reached the edge of a wide pit and awkwardly tipped into it. As they entered free fall, Bel desperately clung to Orseis so she wouldn’t drift away. In the flailing of limbs Bel couldn’t make out what was below them, so she was taken by surprise when they hit a wooden platform after falling for only a couple of seconds.

“It’s that annoying bitch.”

Bel looked up to see Rikja staring at her from the other end of a wooden bridge. The ends of the walkway were anchored to the ceiling of the fifth layer, and all of the cultists had gathered on one end of it.

Bel tried to suppress the wobble in her legs as she stood, focusing on looking tough and much more healthy than she felt.

“Rikja,” she greeted the other woman coldly. Great, how can I stall for time?

The ever-angry meerkat didn’t give her a chance. “You look better with your face all cut up,” she mocked, before tossing a crackling orb of fire straight at Bel’s face.

Bel pivoted and stretched out a hand, hitting the orb with a shockwave before it could hit her. The fire burst apart and rolled like a wave back towards Rikja, forcing the angry fire mage to redirect it downwards into the layer below.

“It seems she’s learned some new tricks,” Nebamon stated. His mustache was more ragged than when she’d last seen him, but his face still looked just as punchable.

“That’s not all I’ve learned,” Bel blustered.

“Right. Well, it’s a waste of a trap, but I don’t feel like dealing with you.”

Bel tensed as the swordsman hefted his weapon, but then he surprised her by swinging it downwards.

Why is… oh.

Realization hit Bel just as the platform gave way with a violent spray of wood. Now missing half of its support, the bridge swung free from Nebamon’s side and took her along with it. She wrapped her arms protectively around Orseis as they rolled down the platform and were dumped into the open air.