Outside Influences

Bel guessed that the dozen cultists left in Nebamon’s group were skilled and experienced fighters. She know that Rikja and Nebamon were dangerous, and if the rest had survived being hunted by the stitched together monster that Crystal had become then they couldn’t have been helpless. The only things Bel had going for her were the element of surprise, a willingness to do stupid things, and a muscle-headed girl with a bunch of tentacles.

It was why she and Orseis had spent a day watching the cultists without doing anything. After that, they’d asked James and the strategists of the Golden Plains for advice before spending weeks pulling what felt like stupid pranks.

They started by gathering an itching vine that deterred predators with an irritating oily coating. Then they rubbed the vines into all of the wood near the encampment, ruining the cultist’s closest supply of firewood.

They chased away any herds of animals that came too close, ensuring that the cultists’ hunting trips would take longer and be less bountiful.

They dug pit traps – obvious and easily avoided, and perhaps not even dangerous in the lower gravity, but still annoying.

They caught the goo-producing eels that had almost choked Orseis to death and stored them in sleds they’d carved from ice. Bel went upstream of the cultist’s camp and dumped the eels into the water, ensuring that the cultist’s would mostly be catching snot. Orseis waited downstream to catch the eels again, and they repeated the process every few days.

The rotated between different things so they wouldn’t be caught – they weren’t actually looking to start a fight, at least not yet. Instead they took advantage of the groups cautious nature to harass them without doing something so bad that it had to be dealt with. Nebamon’s group certainly knew that someone was messing with them; Bel had overheard Rikja screaming and cursing after she’d tripped into some of the itching vines. It brought a smile to Bel’s face that didn’t leave for days.

Knowing that they were being harassed, the cultists became more paranoid. They made their wall more robust and started going around in groups of six instead of groups of three. They even spent time making new weapons, and Bel was interested to see that one of them was skilled enough to craft several crossbows from nothing but wood and rocks. Clearly their group was better prepared to survive in the wilderness than Bel and Orseis, but the constant harassment was making them testy and sleep-deprived.

Testy and sleep-deprived was exactly what Bel was aiming for. James had been an endless fountain of ideas, and Beth had helped to refine them into a two phase plan: degrade the cultist’s position, then ambush them when they were at their lowest. Beth had been really excited to offer advice, and it was the most fun Bel had with her sister in a long while.

She shook her head to clear out the distracting thoughts. She was moments away from transitioning from harassment to pulling off an actual ambush. She knew herself well enough to recognize that thinking about random things was her way of coping with stress, but that didn’t make it a good idea.

Bel eased herself upwards and peered through a small peephole she had poked into a snowbank. Currently she was on top of a tall spire of rock, perched at the pinnacle of one of the snowy cliffs of the fifth layer. Below her was the only herd of thunderhooves that she and Orseis hadn’t chased away from Nebamon’s camp. A half dozen cultists had formed a hunting party and were on their way to Bel’s position. They were sneaking through the snow to avoid the thunderhooves line of sight, but easily visible from Bel’s vantage point.

She pulled in a deep breath and held it while willing her heart to slow. The moments seemed to drip like tar as she watched the half dozen cloaked figures slowly creep towards her position. Bel had been spying on the group on and off for weeks, so she recognized each of them.

There was Rikja, of course, the hateful fire mage who she had first met in Satrap. She was high in her second core, but Bel felt like she would be a terrible fighter up close. Beth had advised her to put a dagger through Rikja’s vitals as quickly as possible.

The leader of the group was probably more dangerous, although Bel was less certain of his abilities. He was a thick, scaled man with clawed hands and a heavy, thumping gate. The rest of his physique was conceal by a dark robe, but Bel had figured out that he was second in command to Nebamon. Bel had seen him use some kind of wind manipulation abilities and he had also displayed feats of strength that would shame a team of hauling lizards. Her brainstorming group had guessed that those abilities came from two different Paths, meaning that he was somewhere in his third core. Of the hunting party, he was the likely to be the most dangerous.

Next came the artificer. Bel assumed that his abilities were similar to Crystal’s: slow to get started, but eventually devastating. That made him what Beth had called priority target number three.

She lumped the last three together as low priority targets. Two of them were scorpion relatives, so Bel had to be mindful of their tails and pincers. Their claws made them terrible shots with their crossbows, though, and she hadn’t seen any impressive abilities from them.

The last person was a kangaroo. Normally Bel would be worried about his agility and powerful kicks, but his body was unsuited to the slippery snow. She’d seen him hopping incredibly high into the air only to end up head first in a snowdrift on more than one occasion. None of the last three had flashy abilities, so she assumed some basic body augmentations. She didn’t write them off, but Bel would prefer to focus on eliminating the first three before bothering with the rest – if she had a choice.

Bel watched them until they were directly below her spot.

It’s now or never, she told herself.

Bel pushed her agitated snakes from her face and shoved her other hand under the snow. The ground thumped with the force of her shockwave, and a moment later all of the snow on her rocky spire rushed to meet the ground. White flakes filled the air, blocking her vision. She waited a few moments for signs of movement, but everything had gone unnaturally still.

Bel crept forward to peer over the edge of her perch so she could assess the results. As she moved, she grabbed her weapon: a short sword that she’d fashioned from bone. Calling it a sword was maybe a bit too kind, but after going through an entire fox-worm skeleton and hours with her liquify ability she had finally ended up with a tool that could probably kill someone if she stabbed them hard enough.

She peered over the edge…

The hunters were peering back at her. They were fine. A quick glance showed a cone of debris around their leader and a hardened, waist high wall of ice around the artificer. Nebamon’s people were simply waiting for their attacker to show themselves, and Bel had foolishly obliged.

Before she could pull herself back, the bulky lizard leader hurled a blast of air at her precarious perch, blowing the snow and rock apart. She tumbled down the rocky slope, crossbow bolts and a whip of fire cutting through the air around her. Bel kicked off of a stable-looking rock buried herself in a snowdrift. It wasn’t a real solution to her problem, but her avalanche was only supposed to be a distraction anyway – Orseis was in the charge of the actual ambush.

Obviously, two people ambushing a group of six was suicide, so they were enlisting help from the very same herd of thunderhooves that the cultists were hunting. The saber-toothed deer were easily startled and could be scared off easily, but when cornered they became more dangerous than any of the fifth layer’s predators.

From her hiding place, Bel heard the muffled sounds of hoof beats reverberating through the air. The herd had been sent into a stampede by Orseis, and now their route was blocked by an avalanche of snow and a group of dangerous looking cultists. Bel heard a chorus of angry belows and the simultaneous slamming of many hooves on stone and ice.

The ground shook again, this time with far more force than Bel’s lone shockwave. The thunderhooves created a surge in the ground and sent a wave of ice, snow, and rock at the startled cultists.

Bel sneaked a peek out of her hiding spot and grinned with delight as she saw a couple of the cultists flung through the air like worthless trash.

Not all of them were caught flat-footed though. The leader braced his arms in front of his body and held his ground. One of the scorpions thrust a claw into the ground and a small barrier of dirt rose to protect her.

The artificer also escaped. He frantically searched through his holster of metal rods before hoisting one into the air triumphantly. The inscriptions on the metal glowed and he rose into the air like a leaf in the wind.

Three of the cultists were indisposed and the other two were focusing on the her, so when the artificer drifted directly in front of Bel’s position she didn’t hesitate for even a heartbeat to pounce from her hiding place and slam her short sword under his ribs.

His wand fell from his lifeless fingers, ending his levitation spell, and Bel and his fresh corpse fell through the air after it. She kicked his still twitching body away so she didn’t become tangled in it and assessed her landing spot.

The thunderhooves had decided that the best defense was a strong offense and were charging through the still-standing members of the hunting party. The scorpion who had resisted the ground assault regretted her momentary victory when one of the beasts, with a swipe of its wide antlers, gored her through the torso.

The bulky man fared better, simply bracing himself and then leaping over the entire charging herd with help from a small burst of air.

Bel landed in the relative calm after the charge, as if she had planned the entire thing.

The leader was still drifting back to the ground – nearly a hundred strides away and momentarily out of mind – so Bel turned upon her next priority target.

Rikja.

Bel’s thoughts flashed quickly to Jan’s disappointed expression when they’d talked about the fire mage turned cultist, but Bel quickly dismissed the distraction. This was a kill or be killed moment, and she was certain that the angry meerkat would be happy to roast her on a spit.

When Rikja pulled herself from a pile of snow, the first thing she saw was Bel charging straight for her. Rikja’s lips skimmed back in a feral snarl and the fire mage reacted just as Bel had predicted: a wall of fire erupted between them.

Most animals didn’t like to jump through fire, but Bel wasn’t an animal. Most people would be singed – or at least momentarily blinded – after such a daring stunt, but Bel used thermal regulation to shunt her warmth into her magma snake and dove straight through the fire.

Rikja’s eyes widened in surprise, but she was quick to throw several orbs of fire in Bel’s direction. They both knew that the lesser attacks wouldn’t be enough to stop Bel, so Rikja began gathering a more impressive orb of hissing flame in her palms.

Rikja sneered at Bel, and her mouth quirked open to say something. Bel glared at her, causing Rikja’s eyes to go glassy for a moment. Bel saw her opportunity and pounced.

In the blink of an eye, Bel was there.

Rikja tried to toss the hastily formed ball of fire at her, but Bel swiped with her weapon and sent Rikja stumbling back. Bel leaned to the side to dodge the hastily thrown flames, then bent back and kicked Rikja in the gut. The meerkat fell backwards with a snarl, and reached into her sleeve.

“No tricks,” Bel hissed. She plunged her bone sword into the woman’s gut. The she pulled a bone dagger from a woven sash at her waist and stabbed Rikja through her eye.

She stabbed her body again as it collapsed, a sudden fury wresting her body away from her rational mind’s control.

“You wanted to feed me to your beetle-god,” she seethed as her weapons plunged into flesh. “You thought I was nothing but livestock!”

She kicked the corpse free from her sword.

“Well, now you’re dead and so is your god,” Bel panted.

A thump from behind her brought her back to reality. Bel whipped around, the energy for a glare pooling behind her eyes. Before she could lock eyes with her attacker a heavy impact sent her flying through the air. She slammed into the rock wall and fell into the snow.

Stars spun in her vision, but Bel didn’t hesitate to throw herself to the side and away from the inevitable follow-up attack. She cursed internally; how could she forget that the group leader was still up and moving?