Outside Influences

Bel’s pushed back her panic. Yes, something had grabbed her in midair when she’d been hopping around, enjoying her new ability and the fifth layer’s weaker gravity. No, she hadn’t seen it coming. She could beat herself up about it later, but right now she had to figure out what was going on.

First, what grabbed me?

Bel was held in place by a pair of spindly forelimbs that were wrapped under her body. The owner of those limbs was a giant bug.

Typical. It’s always bugs. Actually, this looks like a shrimp – so a water bug, except it’s in the sky.

The shrimp was around twice Bel’s size, with two bulbous eyes elevated on eye stalks over its head and a multicolored carapace of rocky gray shot through with veins of blue and gold. A pair of whiskers poked at her with eager anticipation as the flying shrimp pranced through the air. From her current perspective, she could see that it didn’t have any wings or other means of locomotion other than the army of legs moving underneath it. She’d seen enough.

I know how to deal with bugs, whether they swim in the ocean or run through the air, she thought vindictively.

She looked it in the bulbous eyes and glared.

The creature froze. Bel expected to drop, but instead they remained hovering in the air.

Close enough, Bel smirked. She tried to wriggle free, but found, to her dismay, that she was still locked in the shrimp’s embrace. It felt as if there was a heavy pressure squeezing her body, something entirely separate from the arms of her captor. She strained and wriggled until she was flushed with exertion.

Then she realized that she was having trouble breathing; whatever pressure was pinning her in place was also compressing her chest. As she’d puffed and gasped the air had been forced out of her lungs, leaving them empty and yearning for a freshly drawn breath. Bel channeled more energy through lung capacity as her lungs strained, trying to get the most of out the shallow gasps that she could manage with the oppressive force squeezing her chest.

I’m not going to get killed by some random flying shrimp, she berated herself.

Bel focused her attention onto her hand and directed a shockwave at her assailant. The angle was bad, and it would likely only take off an arm, but Bel was fine with that. Her energy flowed through her core, tracing the strokes of the ability as usual. Then the energy dissipated into the air and… and nothing happened. It fizzled out, stopping halfway through, and the rest of her unused energy dripped back into her core like a chastened pet meekly slinking back to its owner.

Panic gripped her. What happened? It’s stunned, how could it stop my ability?

Spots were beginning to swim through her vision as her exertion and lack of air took its toll. Her desire to draw breath was like a voice screaming in the back of her mind, but she couldn’t do anything – she didn’t understand what was happening.

Finally, with a twitch of its feelers, the shrimp came back to life. It resumed its through the air as if it had never been interrupted. Its legs pumped as it pranced in a circle, turning them back around to charge straight for the rocky cliffs where it had snatched her.

Just before it collided with the sheer wall, it let her go, hurling her at the rocks. Bel greedily stole a breath in the heartbeat before her body was brought to a halt in a painful collision. Stars burst in her eyes and she staggered as she struggled to stay upright. The thought popped into her head that James would be disappointed that she wasn’t taking his advice and avoiding head injuries.

Bel barely managed to get her wobbling feet under her before the shrimp rushed forward again. She braced for its attack, expecting a slash from its legs or a bite from its mandibles, but instead it punched forward with its front legs. Bel didn’t even have time to register the movement when they unfurled at the elbows with lightning speed and slammed into her chest with the concussive force of a whale.

Bel was knocked into the rocky wall again, but now her chest ached and she coughed up a few drops of blood before her abilities could staunch her internal bleeding.

What the hell, this isn’t fair! It’s just some bug! Why is it kicking my ass?

Before Bel could get her feet under her again, she found herself locked into place. The shrimp had activated its pressure ability again, rooting her to the spot so it could wind up for a second body breaking blow.

Her feet were on the ground this time though, which meant that she could use her newest ability. She activated pounce, and, unlike with her previous attempts, this time she wasn’t completely stuck in place. She moved, just a small amount, a tiny hop really, but when her head poked out of the top of her invisible cage she immediately understood what the shrimp was doing. It was squeezing the air in a spot, making it so thick and heavy that it was like a solid object rather than air. She’d jumped with enough force to get her head out of the solidified block, but the rest of her was still stuck in it, suspended like a creature trapped in ice.

It must have been using the same ability to walk through the air, she realized.

She watched with dread and frustration as it backed up slightly before winding up its legs for a killing blow.

Wait, Dutcha’s path offered an ability like that. I took liquify instead, but maybe they’re all similar. My ability may be able to cancel this one out.

Bel focused on the air and tried to liquify it; to her relief it worked. Her body sank back to the ground as the formerly solid block lost cohesion and drifted apart. Bel tensed her body as she readied her own ability. The shrimp stepped forward to hammer with its forelegs again, but Bel lifted her hand and blew off its face with a powerful shockwave.

Its legs kicked weakly, spasming in death, and the body slumped to the ground.

“Take that, you stupid sky shrimp,” she muttered angrily.

As her life or death struggle ended and the adrenaline began to fade, Bel clutched at the pain deep in her chest. She could feel an ache that seemed to go nearly all the way through her and into her core.

She bared her teeth at the corpse of the shrimp. I want that ability.

However the giant shrimp’s ability had worked, Bel could tell that it was specialized to work on the air. Dutcha’s version was probably more powerful, but Bel wouldn’t be able to use it more than once or twice. The shrimp had been able to use its ability nearly continually to run on the air.

Bel looked through the sky to be sure nothing else was sneaking up on her, before carefully shuffled over to the colorful arthropod. She carefully placed a hand upon its carapace and extended her senses into the creature’s core. It was as alien as most of the creatures she’d picked through, but she quickly recognized its air manipulation ability.

She frowned; it was too large and complicated, and didn’t feel at all similar to her liquify ability. She didn’t think she’d be able to trace it onto her core on the first attempt.

Bel clicked her tongue. Even with two or three attempts she would struggle to take the ability, and she could already feel the core weakening from her attention. She refused to get nothing from her painful encounter.

She cracked open the creature’s core and pulled out as much essence as she could before it could go to waste. It was a satisfying feeling at least, and her own core blared triumphantly as two more thresholds bloomed. The shrimp’s energy had even taken her part way to a third threshold.

At least I know it was pretty strong. If this had just been something random like those tree rats in the previous layer I would die of shame right now, but the sky shrimp was a worthy opponent.

“Is that food?”

Bel turned at Orseis’ voice, surprised that the cuttlefish girl was outside despite her ongoing brain trauma. Then she realized that the fighting had been happening right next to the entrance to their hiding cave and that the noise had drawn her outside.

If I’d died that would have been the worst. Orseis would’ve had to let everyone know that I didn’t make it three steps from shelter before being caught by a giant bug.

Bel put on a brave face and gestured at the dead shrimp. “Yup, it’s food. It’s probably as close to sea food as we’ll get around here.”

Orseis nodded eagerly and rushed over the to the dead arthropod. Her movements still looked a little wobbly to Bel, but she thought that the younger girl was getting better.

“Hey Ori,” Bel called.

“I don’t like that nickname,” Ori griped.

“Sure. Is it possible to only use part of an ability?”

Orseis pressed her lips together. Bel worried that the nickname was actually starting to bother her, but when the girl’s tentacles began to roam towards the shrimp Bel realized that she was just hungry and cranky.

“Why would you want to use part of an ability?”

Bel pointed at the shrimp. “This thing was using an ability that I’m pretty sure is just a weaker, but kind of specialized, version of something I could get from Dutcha. I’d rather have the weaker, specialized version, because it’s probably way cheaper. If I did have Dutcha’s version though, could I use it at a weaker strength to get the same limited effect with less energy?”

Orseis tilted her head, confused. “That’s a weird thing to want.”

“It’s not weird. I just want to know if there’s a way to use abilities at a level between the passive version of an ability, where I’m not spending any essence, and the normal version, where I’m sending enough energy to fill all the strokes in the ability,” Bel huffed.

Orseis shrugged. “That’s such a you problem, Bel.”

Bel’s snakes hissed. “I’m tempted to give you another brain injury. Maybe enough of them will fix your snark.”

Orseis waved her tentacles defensively. “Whoah, I’m serious. Most abilities are pretty weak, so using a weaker version wouldn’t do anything. The gods don’t like giving away their best abilities, you know.”

Orseis gestured at the dead shrimp. “And abilities that have evolved naturally, they’re usually hyper-specific. A nice ability lets you push it a bit harder by pushing extra essence through, but that’s it, none of this partial activation stuff.”

Bel quirked an eyebrow. “But something like liquify does a ton of stuff. I mean, I just used it to liquify the air around me to escape this thing, but it also works to soften rock or weaken the bones of an enemy. That can’t all be the same effect, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.” Orseis pointed a tentacle at Bel. “Some of your abilities are just too strong. That shockwave? That should start as a small ability, not have a base power level that can blow the face off of a powerful monster.”

“Yeah, it’s great,” Bel agreed proudly, “why would you say it’s too strong?”

“Sure, it’s efficient for how powerful it is,” Orseis sighed, “but mortals like us don’t get nice things like that, and you can barely handle it. You run out of energy just using it a couple of times. That isn’t a problem most of us have.”

Bel pursed her lips. “So you’re saying that you don’t know if I could, for example, use a weaker version of my shockwave because that just not a problem that anyone else has?”

Orseis nodded. “Yup. Like I keep saying, you’re weird.” She shrugged. “If you want my advice, try running energy through only some of the strokes, see if anything still happens.”

“The patterns are really complicated,” Bel complained.

Orseis threw up her tentacles with frustration. “Yeah, of course! Did you think messing with abilities was easy?”

Bel fell into silent contemplation and Orseis shook her head with disgust before turning towards her meal. As Orseis used her tentacles to pull the shrimp’s flesh away from its shell, Bel had an idea.

“Hey. I could make helmets out of this thing’s shell.”

Orseis gave her a dead-eyed look. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. I can reshape things pretty easily with liquify, and we can use some of the broken parachute cords as chin straps. It’ll be great.”

Orseis’ face wrinkled with disgust. “I don’t really want to wear dead things on my head.”

“And I don’t really want to put up with you when you get another concussion,” Bel snapped. “So you’re wearing dead things, whether you like it or not.”

“Besides,” Bel explained, “this’ll give me a reason to experiment with liquify. Maybe I’ll discover something good.”

“Ugh,” Orseis groaned and ripped out a hunk of shrimp, “you can do whatever, I’m too hungry to argue.”