Outside Influences

As soon as the giant squeezed the sack around her neck, Bel thrashed and kicked. Her resistance was completely ineffective, resulting in nothing better than some bruised toes.

“Son of a shit,” she screamed, “let me go you overgrown excuse for an idiot!”

Bel couldn’t tell if the man understood her, but her certainly didn’t let her go. He didn’t seem interested in finishing her off either. Instead, he shook her until she felt queasy before wrapping her up in a thick and heavy sheet of linked chains. Bel writhed a squirmed, but the giant pulled it tighter with her motions until she was struggling to pull breath.

Once her struggled ceased, the bearded giant grunted with satisfaction and carried her back to his mount. He hung her on the side of his oversized fox-worm, leaving her to sway like some bizarre pupating moth. Her capture complete, he remounted his steed, sending Bel swinging from the jostling.

Bel couldn’t see well through the bag, but the movement suggested that the giant was prodding his steed in some direction.

Should I try to break free now that we’re in motion? she wondered.

Bel pondered her situation. What would James say? Look on the bright side?

She shook her head at her brother’s irrational advice. Beth would always say that a good weapon cuts both ways. I’ve just got to look for a moment of opportunity.

The giant wasn’t trying to kill her immediately. He was also moving her quickly, probably away from Crystal. Taken together, her position was actually kind of good.

In her current state – injured, weak from blood loss, and exhausted from multiple fights – Bel was certain that the patchwork Crystal would take care of her as easily as a child poking a beached jellyfish. Even if she managed to break free and escape the giant, that would only leave her in a worse position.

The giant shouted something and the fox-worm scuttled up a small pile of loose rocks and leaped forward upon the flat snow. Bel swayed gently as it moved smoothly over the loose surface with its large, padded feet.

So, what happens if I go along with this guy?

Bel shifted her head as a few of her snakes decided to explore the confines of the bag.

Well, escape will get harder. I’m sure he’s got a camp or something. Maybe even friends.

Bel tried to remember what she’d seen of the towering person. Well kept armor implied a well-supplied group or settlement nearby. His whitish beard was large and bushy, but well kept, with a couple of braids twisted in. It was the look of someone who had to keep up appearances around others. She guessed that he was a hunter, which could explain why he was out on his own, but Bel couldn’t guess what he would want with her.

She tried to think about it, but her exhaustion got the better of her. She wound up drifting in and out of sleep until the fox-worm came to a halt.

Oh, dammit, I didn’t mean to sleep, she chastised herself as she twitched away.

At least now I’ll find out where we’re going.

Bel waited, but nothing happened. She shifted her body slightly, sending herself swinging until she’d twisted enough to make out vague shapes through the fibers of her head covering. As far as she could tell, they’d stopped in the middle of nowhere. She couldn’t even see the giant, although his steed seemed content to wait for its master.

A few minutes later, the giant returned with a large lump thrown over his shoulder. Bel squinted and moved her head around, but she couldn’t make much out through the bag over her head.

“Hey,” she called out, “are you riding around kidnapping people?”

The giant smacked the side of her restraining blanket, sending her spinning. Then he chuckled to himself as he hung his burden next to her. From the small Bel guessed that it was a large, dead thunderhoof.

So, I guess he’s still going out hunting before he brings me back to wherever we’re going.

They set out once again, but this time the smell and occasional bumping with the thunderhoof prevented Bel from dozing off. To her chagrin, they stopped several more times for the purpose of hunting. I guess I’m not even important enough to change his routine, she thought angrily.

Gods, I hope he isn’t going to eat me. That would be the worst.

This wasn’t the plan, was it Kjar? she silently asked hours later. She was supposed to be a bad-ass warrior of the gods who took down the evil Technis, not some dumb-ass who was constantly being captured. Not for the first time, the young gorgon cursed her luck.

Her only consolation was that they had finally returned to the giant’s settlement. The giant had spoken for the first time since her capture, and a pair of voices had responded. If anyone was bothered by a living person swinging from the side of the fox-worm it didn’t show in their voices. Instead it seemed like they were laughing about some shared joke.

After the laughter died down she heard the grinding of something large and metal – probably a gate or doorway – and then the air warmed considerably. The portal slammed shut behind them, the heavy boom heralding the loss of her dreams of an easy escape.

A few moments later, a second door opened and released a roar of sound from a large group of people. It sounds were accompanied by the thick and heavy scent of too many people squeezed into too small a space. Bel realized that she’d been taken into some kind of cavern-town carved directly into the rock.

Please Lempo, please don’t let them eat gorgon.

Bel’s snakes hissed angrily as she was tossed and shuffled around, but her captor only seemed to delight in her struggles. He was joined by several more voices, all belonging to people who enjoyed prodding her and seeing her twitch. Bel tried to struggle again, just to show that she could, but the weight of the chained blanket soon wore her out. She was tossed over someone’s shoulder where she hung limply, placid as a bag of tubers.

As she was carried further into the settlement, the sounds around her grew louder. There was a mix of happy and angry shouting that reminded Bel of a marketplace. That was followed by shouting and screaming that she associated with drunken competitions. From there they entered a building that only slightly muffled the drunken shouts, replacing them with the snaps and growls of wild animals. The roof of the building thumped and shook like it was being assaulted by a hailstorm.

Or maybe just a troupe of rooftop dancers, she joked to herself.

Her captor shouted something and several voices shouted back. Bel soon found herself being passed around like some kind of fascinating insect. She shouted a complaint, but a stern poke to her solar plexus rendered her once again ashamed and helpless.

The bag over her head was abruptly pulled free, but before Bel could even focus on her surroundings she was thrust up against the exterior of a metal cage. The cage’s inhabitant – another one of the long-necked, six-legged fox-worms – didn’t seem happy at her presence. It growled at her and took a warning swipe through the air with one of its clawed feet.

Bel tried to push away from the cage with her uninjured arm, but her captor pushed her against it repeatedly while yelling insistently. Then they pulled her back and turned her towards another wall. Bel stared in horror, and the severed head of another gorgon stared back.

A huge, meaty hand pointed at the severed head and a voice from behind her boomed into her ears.

“I can’t understand what you’re saying,” Bel shouted back. She tried to get herself into the right frame of mind to use her divine speech, but, before she found any success, the giant jerked her to the side and shoved her head into the bars again.

What do they want from me? she wailed.

The caged animal finally lost its patience at her return. It lunged at her, clearly intending to take out its anger on her face. Her snakes formed a hissing halo around her head and she hit it with a powerful glare. Its muscles tensed up and it clunked awkwardly into the bars of the cage.

The giant whipped her away from the bars and the group cheered. Bel was being swung around enough to make her dizzy. From the bits of clarity that she could snatch though, she learned that she was in some kind of livestock room. Cells filled the space, each one a roughly square space dug out from the stone and blocked off with heavy, metal bars.

The creature that she’d stunned was rushed by several giants, who got busy strapping a harness to its body. As the creature began to twitch the wranglers struggled to hold it down. Her captor thrust her up against the bars of the cell once again, shouting loudly in her ear.

Bel noticed that all of the giants in the cell kept their gazes somewhere other than her direction.

Ah. I get it. They want to use me to subdue the animals.

Bel wondered if the struggling monster would be able to injure any of the giants if she held back. The thought was banished quickly; the continual slamming of her face against the metal bars convinced her that this wasn’t the moment for her defiance. Bel glared at the captured beast once again, stilling it long enough for the workers to finish buckling and tightening the leather harness.

Then they all rushed out of the cell and closed it behind them. The beast stared at her with bloodlust and murder in its eyes, clearing blaming her for its circumstances.

Whatever, buddy. I’m just a captive like you. You would’ve attacked me without hesitation out in the wild, anyway. Bel stuck her tongue out at the angry beast as she was carried away.

Her satisfied captor swung her through the air as he walked. The rough treatment slapped her snakes into several obstacles before he finally pulled open the door to an empty cage and spun her out of her restraints and onto the damp, rocky floor. The doors of her cell clanked shut, and then the giants threw a large sheet over the front of her cell to block her vision. She spent a few moments stretching and working out the kinks in her cramped body before she sat up and sighed.

The cell was bleak – burrowed straight out of the rock, with no decoration or neighbors. She couldn’t help but see the parallel to her time in Technis’ High Temple, before James had been thrown in the cell next to her, back when she’d been completely alone.

It’s been four years since then, right?

Bel slowly twisted her back and sighed with relief as a few of her vertebra popped.

Or is it closer to five years now? How long have I been down here?

It felt to her that she’d just left Flann a few weeks prior, but since she’d left James had already become the father of some demi-human grubs.

Don’t ants breed fast though? Or do humans–

A thunk and splat drew her mind back to the present. She saw that someone had deposited a hard block of something and a bucket of something. Then an arm emerged from around the sheet and deposited a pile of hay.

I don’t know what that’s for, but the bucket may have food?

She wriggled over to the bucket and peered into its mysterious depths. Not much light made it through the sheet, so she took a deep sniff and wrinkled her nose.

Slop, she thought. The only proper word for that is slop.

Bel grimaced. From her past experience as Technis’ prisoner she knew that she would eventually give in and eat it.

For now though, I think I’ll do a bit of exploration.