Outside Influences

For reasons that Bel didn’t understand, her captors didn’t even seem to consider that she could have anything more threatening than her glare. The giants either covered her face, looked at her through reflections, or just didn’t look at her. Other than a long chain clamped around her ankle, they took no other precautions and didn’t consider her a threat. Bel didn’t disillusion them about her abilities – it wasn’t time for that, not yet.

Now on her third day as their prisoner, she was being dragged around their menagerie and shoved against different cages to stun the animals inside. The giants didn’t speak to her and didn’t listen if she spoke to them, even in the divine voice that she got from her parents. It was dehumanizing, but their casual dismissal gave her the opportunity to inspect the subterranean space as she was led around.

She was, as she’d guessed the first night, inside of a large cavity carved directly into one of mountain-sized rocks that littered the floor of Olympos’ fifth layer. Everything was carved from the same single piece of solid rock in the same rough, uncaring style as the giants dressed. The edges of rooms weren’t clear of debris and the walls were only as smooth as necessary to prevent injury. Some effort was taken to keep the floor smooth, but Bel guessed that was only because the giants didn’t bother putting wheels on the cages that they dragged around. All in all, the only impressive thing about the giants and their underground town was their size.

The giants weren’t all as large as the one who had captured her, but all of them were at least two and a half times her height, with muscled limbs as thick as tree trunks and heavy footsteps that shook the ground beneath them. All of them – both men and women – had an obsession with teeth and horns and decorated their leather clothing with both to great excess. From tooth-studden boots to horn-peaked hats, every article of clothing was decorated. She assumed that they were advertising their own hunting prowess, but it reminded her of what James liked to call “overcompensating.”

Their taste in sport wasn’t any better. The creatures they caught were used for three things: mounts, meals, and abilities. The creatures in the first group were kept alive, but the other two were destined for death. Bel hadn’t hung around any butchers, but she was fairly sure that most people slaughtered their animals without any unnecessary cruelty. Not so for the giants though; instead, they made a sport of every animal’s death.

Every midday meal was an excuse to practice their axe throwing, every dinner a reason to release an animal into a caged arena and run it down to exhaustion. Even if they hadn’t kidnapped her, Bel would have disliked them. The thing that pushed that dislike over into hate though, the thing that made them absolutely deserving of punishment, was the severed head of a gorgon swinging casually from the belt of her guard.

The woman, possibly a few years older than Bel, had been killed and turned into a tool. Symbols had been engraved across her face like she was one of Cyrstal’s wands. Her head had been mounted upon a metal plate like a large, decorative cameo. When Bel tired too much to glare they pulled out the head and sent energy through it and the dead gorgon’s eyes would light up and have a similar effect to Bel’s own ability. The unknown gorgon, the first sign of others of her kind that Bel had ever seen, had been murdered and turned into a tool for a society of sociopaths.

They all deserved to be punished. And Bel had to do it on her own.

Escape was easy in comparison. She’d already spotted several air shafts that she would fit through, and air shafts had to lead to a place with fresh air. Escaping her restraints would be easily with the help of liquify, as would breaking through any grates at the ends of the shafts. She could escape if she wanted to, but she felt a burning need to bring down the entire mountain onto the heads of the giants who mistreated others so disdainfully.

She did feel a bit guilty about Orseis; she’d promised the younger girl that she would be back soon. Orseis would be lonely, but not in any danger if Crystal tracked Bel to the giants. Either in life or in death Crystal wasn’t the most subtle person, so Bel was eagerly looking forward to the chaos that would break out when she arrived.

Until then, Bel had to bide her time and prepare.

After subduing a sky shrimp – the giants bound it and loaded it onto a cart for transportation – her guard lead her back towards her cell, dragging the caged creature with them. Halfway there he stopped to chat with a female guarding a door, and Bel was left chained but ignored in a new part of the cavern. The woman wore a hat full of small, pointy teeth and scowled at Bel’s guard as he started talking. She swiftly opened the door behind her and shoved the caged sky shrimp through, but the male hung around and kept talking rather than continue on.

Bel took advantage of the moment to look around, doing her best to act casually to avoid drawing attention to herself. The layout of the new area was similar to everything else that she’d seen, although the guarded door was new. There was also small nook set into the wall that was just above her height. Bel quietly climbed onto some nearby stones to peer over the edge and saw that it was a small shrine. A couple of figures stalked through the darkness of the alcove, their stone eyes shining in the darkness. She guessed that they were gods of the hunt, or something similar, since each one was wielding a weapon and standing triumphant over their prey.

The giants had also deposited the severed heads of several kills along the sides of the shrine, probably as offerings. Bel wrinkled her nose with distaste and climbed back down.

A glance at her guard revealed that he was pushing his luck with the woman, but Bel could tell from her body language that things weren’t going well for him. She smirked and looked into the nearest cage. Inside was a green, tentacled… something.

Some kind of green, slimy, land octopus? she mused.

Her foot scuffed the ground as she leaned closer, and the creature rolled in her direction. Bel gaped as it split in a horizontal line across its middle and a tooth-filled maw opened up. The rows of needle-like teeth reminded Bel of the female guard’s hat, but she didn’t want to get a closer look. She took a step back, just as a mess of tentacles reached towards her through the bars of the creature’s cell. It wriggled at her, hungry for flesh, and the metal bars groaned under its weight.

Bel frowned. I hope these things aren’t roaming around where Orseis is waiting.

The giant tugged on Bel’s ankle chain then, suddenly impatient to get on with his work. Bel glanced at his face and saw a large red mark on his cheek, just visible over his shaggy beard. She couldn’t quite keep the smirk off her face, even as she rushed to keep up with the giant’s long steps lest he simply drag her over the floor. A slap wasn’t the punishment she was looking for, but she enjoyed every bit of unhappiness in her captors.

The giant hurried Bel back to her cell so he could blow off steam murdering some helpless animal, forcing Bel to run most of the way. Before slamming the cell shut, he tossed some slop and a bucket of water into the cell and turned away. Bel sniffed with disdain as he sauntered off. As usual, the giants had left her all unattended.

There there were a pair of guards at the far end of her chamber, but they weren’t close enough to keep an eye on her. Bel slipped out of their line of sight and immediately went into her nightly routine.

First, she scaled the cell wall using the handholds that she’d placed with liquify. Next, she slipped out through the top of her cell via a crack that she’d widened above the bars. After passing through, she paused for a few moments to watch the guards, but they were too busy playing a game that involved dice and drinking to notice her movements. Bel swiftly retraced her path to the newish area that she’d passed through earlier in the day.

Travelling through the giant’s domain was nerve-wracking, but it had benefits. As she passed by a small storeroom, she retrieved a chunk of jerked meat for dinner and took a few gulps of their clean water. She hadn’t been forced to eat even a single slurp of slop since she’d arrived, and she didn’t intend to.

After sating herself, she fetched her spelunking tools. She tied a rope of leather around her waist to serve as a belt, passing it through a coil of thick rope and a needle the length of her forearm. The needle was the closest thing to a weapon she’d been able to find that would fit in her hands, and ropes were just useful things to keep around. She also tied a makeshift speer to her back, its haft made from the smashed corner of a wooden storage box and the blade from a chipped weapon that she’d found discarded in a rubbish heap. Armed and fed, she stalked through the nighttime corridors, alert for the loud voices and ground-shaking steps of the giants.

Once she retraced her steps to the new hallway, Bel went far enough to see what had merited the female guard’s attention. Most of the side passages were left unattended, and there were very few rooms with doors. The fact that this passage had both a door and a guard made Bel think that it was something important. A guard was still present when she arrived, but she saw with a mix of shock and satisfaction that they were asleep.

These giants are so bad at this. Why even bother posting a guard?

Her mouth dropped open as she shook her head with astonishment at the sight of the giant sitting on the floor in front of the door. Incompetence aside, she couldn’t just push past the armed warrior. Her bulky body leaned back against the door itself, preventing anyone from getting past without alerting her. Bel’s lips twisted as she looked around for another way past, and her eye drifted up the door and settled on a peep hole a third of the way from the top.

Excellent! Now I just need to fly and my problems are solved!

Bel chuckled at humor.

What have I got? A needle and some rope?

She looked at the rough ceiling and shrugged. With the weak-ass gravity in here, I should be able to get over top. Then I’ll liquify the stone, stab in the needle, and come down on the rope. Easy.

Bel hesitated for a few minutes before executing her plan. If anyone walked by when she was precariously dangling from the ceiling she’d be done for. She waited to see if the guard was only sleeping lightly, or if there were any roaming patrols, but after she’d waited long enough that she was feeling sleepy, she decided to go for it.

She quietly hummed to herself as she gripped the stones and swung her body across the ceiling.

“Spider-Bel, Spider-Bel, something something, Spider-Bel.”

She reached the spot above the door and went silent. She wedged her feet onto the top of the door frame to give her arms a rest and waited to see if there were any changes in the guard or the rest of the room.

I should get James to tell me that story again, she thought idly. He used to tell me all sorts of stories when I first learned English, but that mostly stopped once Beth rescued us.

She tilted her head and examined one of her snakes quizzically. Or maybe stories about spider people won’t seem as fantastical now that he’s having children with an ant-girl.

Her snake flicked its tongue at her, clearly uninterested in stories from the Old World.

Enough rest. Back to work.

With deliberate motions with one of her hands Bel untied her belt and slowly transferred the needle to her mouth, careful to not let anything fall onto the sleeping giant. She touched the wall above the stone door and softened it with a quick application of liquify before quickly jabbing the needle deep into the stone. Then she pulled her rope free and passed an end through the eye of the needle. She threw an arm over the needle for balance and retied her belt around her body and then tied the rope to the belt.

The rope around her belt went up and through the needle and she held the loose end in her hands. I think this is a pulley, right? I remembered something! James would be proud.

She hadn’t talked to her brother since she’d been captured. She guessed that being hidden inside of the stone mountain blocked contact from her brother, but in that moment she was glad. James had a bad habit of calling her at the worst possible times, and for this tricky maneuver she didn’t want anything unexpected to distract her.

Bel carefully lowered herself by letting more rope pass through her hands. Small bits of fiber were scraped free as it passed through the needle’s eye, but nothing looked close to breaking. Bel’s heart thumped as she approached the sleeping guard, but she made it to the level of the peephole without raising an alarm.

She sighed with relief. Okay, let’s see what’s so important.

Bel put her good eye to the hole in the massive wooden door and peered through. The other side was surprisingly well-lit, and the walls were so smooth and polished that they practically glowed in the light. The perimeter of the room was curved to create a perfectly cylindrical space, with small nooks that held glowing orbs that ran on some unfamiliar magic. In the center of the room was a hole. Steps seemed to spiral down, but Bel could only see the first few of them.

Is that a way down to the next level? she wondered. If so, that really simplifies things.

She pulled her eye away from the peephole and blinked at the sudden darkness. As her eye adjusted to the lower lighting, Bel chewed on her cheek and pondered what to do next.

If Orseis were here, we could make a run for it. The only way to get Orseis through this place is to wipe out the giants though.

She sighed softly. I guess that I’ll just have to keep waiting here for Crystal to show up, and hope that she and the giants mostly wipe each other out.

Just then a loud shrieking noise blasted through the cavern. Bel instinctively clapped her hands over her ears as pain erupted in her ears, but without anything holding the rope she fell. The giantess was just stirring from the loud noise when Bel fell onto her head and took a painful roll down her tooth-studded helmet and onto her lap. They stared at one another in mutual shock for several heartbeats.

When giant woman opened her mouth to yell, so Bel glared at her. The guard grit her teeth and her jaw strained as she she was trying to break the hold of Bel’s gorgonic powers through sheer force of will.

Not today, Bel thought.

She grabbed the makeshift spear from her back and pounced, jabbing the shaft through the woman’s neck. Bel pushed herself off to the side as the woman sputtered and coughed, watching with satisfaction as one of her captors collapsed in a growing puddle of blood.

Then a thundering boom shook the floor beneath her, sending Bel staggering to the wall to remain upright. “Aw, damn it. I sure hope that was Crystal blowing open their front doors. I don’t think I can take any more surprises.”