Outside Influences

There was a pause after the goddesses left before Cress exploded into excited chatter. Bel nodded happily along with the words, but she didn’t really understand the deal that had been struck.

It sounds like the gods weren’t helping the gorgons out and now my mom is changing that? I kind of remember that Ishmael creature telling me something about that when I was picking my path.

Bel scratched her jaw as she tried to remember any details, but she was too tired.

What would life be like without any of my moms’ or Kjar’s abilities though? The pantheon seem like jerks. And I’m a little disappointed that Kjar didn’t want to help out, too.

Bel watched Cress’ snakes as they rattled their strange tails with excitement.

Then again, if the gorgons did something crazy in the past and supporting them now would start a bigger conflict I can understand Kjar’s reluctance to get involved.

Bel sighed to herself. She still wasn’t even sure how she felt about Beth provoking the people of the Golden Plains to attack Technis and that conflict just involved a single demigod.

Bel was jerked out of her thoughts when Cress wrapped her hand around Bel’s wrist and tugged her away from the shrine.

“Whoah, whoah, hold on, what’s the hurry?” Bel sputtered.

Cress turned and started to speak before opening her mouth, hesitating, and then sighing at their language barrier. She kept pulling on Bel’s arm though, even pulling her over the edge of the alcove. They went a few more steps before Bel dug in her heels and firmly pulled her arm back.

“I can’t go yet,” she explained, “I’ve got to get my friend.”

Bel pointed to herself and then pointed… well, she couldn’t remember which direction would take her to the exit, so she pointed away from the stairs.

“Friend. Must find. Ugh, talking slower won’t help.”

Bel hugged herself. “Friend.”

Then she pointed again. “Outside.”

A hurt expression passed over the other gorgon’s face and she unexpectedly opened her arms to Bel.

“Friend?” she asked.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Sure.”

Bel stepped forward into an awkward hug, careful to keep her new spear away from her new friend. She gave Cress a couple of stiff pats on the back and tried to pull away, but one of her snakes had managed to get tangled with one from Cress’ head.

“Oh, dammit, it’s like that snake guy from the Golden Plains all over again.” Bel carefully tugged her snake free and began scolding it, which elicited a peal of laughter from the other gorgon.

Once her laughter died down, Cress pointed to her head to get Bel’s attention. She snapped her fingers and her snakes neatly coiled along her scalp, forming overlapping loops that gave the illusion of a close cropped haircut. She snapped her fingers again and they hung loose, like long, flowing hair. She snapped her fingers again and the snakes coiled around on another to form successively longer loops, turning themselves into something that Bel thought was very elegant.

Bel clapped. “That’s so great!”

She glanced up at her own snakes, and a couple of them peered at her from the edge of her vision. Bel put a hand over her own head and clicked her fingers at them, commanding their respect and attention. Flora slithered onto her hand and flicked out her tongue, but the rest didn’t move.

“Ugh, why are you girls embarrassing me?”

Cress laughed again.

At least we’re getting along now, Bel thought.

Bel pointed away from the stairs again and Cress hesitantly only a moment before nodding in response. Picking the direction that seemed the most likely to get them to the doors, Bel lead them through the destruction.

She proceeded cautiously, not wanting to get this far only to be ambushed by some ball of tentacles and teeth. The moment that Cress realized that the area was dangerous – the recently eaten corpse of a thunderhoof gave it away – she sucked in a huge breath and unleashed an ear shattering shriek. Everything still living along their path leaped from their hiding places and scuttled, rolled, or galloped away.

“Wow, that’s handy,” Bel marvelled.

Cress held up her arms in a muscular pose and Bel grinned back.

Orseis moved slowly into position, wedging herself into a crack in the rock wall. Her skin changed color and texture to match her surroundings, until only her eyes were visible.

Well, my eyes and these nice warm clothes I made from all the fur Bel was collecting. Gods above, they’re so warm and cozy!

Orseis couldn’t help but wriggle happily in her fuzzy skirt, halter top, and felted moccasins lined with more fur. The movement caused her to momentarily break her camouflage, but she couldn’t resist taking a moment to enjoy having nice things. She’d twisted the hairs together herself before making her current clothing out of the incredibly strong, incredibly soft fur of the local fox worms. Of course she would have been even more stealthy going naked, but if Bel saw her like that then Orseis thought she would die of embarrassment.

On the topic of dying, I should be more serious. This is about life and death and dinner.

She scanned her surroundings, looking for any signs of motion. If she was lucky one of the sky shrimp would wander past – she would settle for just about anything, though.

Orseis’ lower lip pushed up in a frown when she saw the slight movement of a shadow cast by something moving silently along the rocks above her. It wasn’t a surprise: the stalker had been quietly watching her for several days at that point. Every morning Orseis hoped that the mystery person would lose interest and leave, but so far she hadn’t been so lucky.

They’ve had plenty of opportunities to attack, so they’re probably waiting for Bel, she repeated to herself. That rules out Crystal, so I’m guessing that it’s one of the Dark Ravager’s followers.

She snorted quietly. Bel had hoped that Crystal would wipe out the entire lot of them, but at least one must have managed to avoid that fate.

But who would be stupid enough to come pick a fight when they’ve already lost all of their companions?

Orseis ground her beak with irritation. She squeezed out of her nice hiding place and wrapped her tentacles around her body as she braced for the freezing wind. Then she slowly, carefully crept along the mountainside, pretending that she was concentrating on the hunt. In reality, she was making her ways towards some of the traps that she’d prepared for Crystal.

Calling them traps is probably being overly-charitable. More like tripping hazards for the careless, but what did Bel expect? I’m all brawn, no brains here.

Orseis flashed a frustrated red at the thought before quickly getting control of her visible emotions.

Of course Orseis didn’t plan on being dumb forever. When she’d been a little cuttlegirl in the big, wide sea she’d learned that surviving meant attaching herself to the biggest, baddest predator around and making herself useful. No brain required. When she left the shoreline around the Lip and travelled to the Central Plains things had gotten a little bit more complicated.

As a demi-human of the sea, and one with an uncommon lineage, Orseis hadn’t had much luck fitting in. It didn’t help that everyone thought she was just a child – which, she had to admit, was possible. She couldn’t claim to know how cuttle-people aged.

Orseis paused her slow skulking to surreptitiously pull on a couple cords from the parachute, making sure that they were still wedged securely under a heavy rock. She checked her instinct to nod, instead moving on without ever looking at the objects of interest. Instead, her head scanned the horizon as we walked carefully over the treacherous ground, although she wasn’t really looking at anything.

She had to assume that her stalker was a visual type of person, otherwise they wouldn’t feel the need to keep her in sight every day. With any luck, they would watch Orseis’ eyes rather than her tentacles. To be fair, she had far more tentacles than heads, so tracking her eyes was the easier task.

Now what was I thinking about? Oh yeah, survival.

Beth had been a once in a hundred year chance to hitch her fortunes to something completely new. Orseis had jumped at the opportunity without hesitation. Then Bel, the daughter of the biggest, baddest fish to descend upon the Golden Plains in living memory? Yes, please.

Glory and human boys awaited. That was the totality of her initial plan.

After spending time with Bel though, Orseis had started to wonder if her dreams were a little…

Well, she realized that she was acting simple. Not that her plans were bad, but she realized that her execution was lacking. She was drifting along the tides like a jelly rather than swimming against the currents to get where she needed to be.

What jolted her out of her complacency wasn’t just Bel’s pursuit of some grand, divine plan, but that the gorgon was doing it without any real guidance. The instructions the Bel had gotten from her divine patrons basically amounted to “go kill a demigod,” followed by “oh, if his Barrier is in then try going under it.”

Sure, Lempo had arranged for a group of walking root vegetables with teeth to guide them through the layer of fire, but other than that Bel had been making things up as she went. Orseis had always griped that her parents hadn’t guided her enough, or that there weren’t enough of her kind to show her a good path, or that the matchmakers at the Great Swap didn’t have any useful advice for her. Orseis had spent her short life blaming other people for her problems, but Bel put her to shame when she forged into the unknown with nothing more than a shrug and a shake of her snakes.

It inspired Orseis to do a better job choosing her own path. It was why she was sitting at the threshold of forming her third core rather than rushing over it. She was trying to decide what she wanted out of it.

Her slightly younger self would have wanted to keep hitting things harder, but now an entire world of possibilities had opened up for her. It was so much to think about that she was nearly paralyzed with indecision.

All that made it so unfair that this silent stalker was planning on ending all of those choices with a surprise attack. Orseis wasn’t a stranger to death – things died in her tentacles grasp all the time – so a struggle to the death didn’t seem unusual. The timing though, to be stalked and hunted by a dangerous predator just when she’d just gained such life-altering revelation, felt terribly unfair.

She tiptoed forward with a sense of foreboding, running through the speculations she put together in the last few days. If her stalker had survived the death of the rest of the Dark Ravager’s cult, that probably meant that they were the strongest of them.

So they were somewhere in their third core. Probably that swordsman that Bel hated, Nebamon. Orseis scowled at the thought of a sword slicing her to pieces.

She much preferred a brawler or someone with slow, clunky abilities, something that she was used to fighting. Gigampas’ Path had been perfect for hunting beasts on sea and land and she had never picked up the skills required to fight a properly trained warrior. Now though, she regretted never having learned how to use a shield.

Things usually worked out, but she was usually faster and stronger than her prey. She thought back to the large fish that he thrown her against a tree in the second layer.

Things don’t always work out, she thought with chagrin, I’ve just had people around to help me.

At least I haven’t turned around and tried to jump my stalker yet. My best advantage is that they don’t know that I’ve noticed them and the old from a few weeks ago Orseis would have given that up in a moment.

Orseis tip-toed out into the edge of a flat vista and glanced over the edge of the mountain. As she moved away from the cliff face where she knew her stalker was waiting she flooded energy into her sense-enhancing abilities.

One of these days, they’ll attack. When they do, I’ll be ready.

She frowned as she stared into the distance, wondering who would surprise the other more. Who would strike first? Who would better anticipate the other’s moves? Who would taste the sweet flavors of tomorrow and who would be eaten?

Orseis shook her head slightly and glanced into the cold, uninviting distance. Two moving dots on the horizon drew her attention. After a moment of intense squinting Orseis realized that one of the dots was Bel, finally back from whatever chase she’d led Crystal on.

Orseis smiled in relief.

At that moment, when she had relaxed just a fraction, her stalker struck.

“But I’m not dead,” Bel complained.

“Well, you could have fooled us,” James countered. “You keep disappearing on us Bel, how are we to know?”

“I was stuck under a mountain,” she replied dryly. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“I’m not saying it was, I’m just telling you that Hanti held a military funeral and thanked you for your service.”

Bel snorted. “And what did Beth do?”

“Well, she volunteered to go to Skotos and subdue the king of the elves. Their constant attacks on the coast are driving the otter- and seal-folk crazy. Beth is hoping to gain some new allies amongst their ranks, since Hanti has been too successful consolidating power over here.”

“Sounds like lame politics,” Bel replied, “I’ve got way more interesting stuff to talk about.”

“Me too!” James replied with enthusiasm. “Some of my students think that the world is hollow and Bel is starting to move on her own!”

“Your–, no, what? I’m moving where?”

“Not you! My child! Didn’t I tell you that Daran and I named her Bel?”

Bel grinned. “Really? I didn’t know Daran liked me that much.”

“Well, she thought were you probably going to die on this crazy mission from your mom,” he snarked. “She didn’t want me to feel too lonely when you got lost somewhere.”

Bel glanced at Crecerelle, who was looking at Bel’s earring with interest. “Well, I’ll have you know that I’ve practically already succeeded.”

“Oh yeah? Tell me about it,” he replied eagerly.

Cress went still as she peered into the distance, so Bel went quiet and scanned a distant mountain. Isn’t that where I told Orseis to go?

“Bel? You still there?” James asked.

“Ah! It’s Orseis!” she exclaimed with delight.

Bel raised her free hand to wave, but then she saw a small figure leap down upon Orseis from higher up the mountain. Bel’s heart leaped into her throat.

“Ori!” She shouted a warning, but she was too far away to do any good.

Bel immediately channeled her free energy into pounce in a vain attempt to leap the entire distance. With the lessened gravity she manage to clear a couple hundred strides as she launched herself over the snow, but she didn’t get anywhere close to her friend. Bel caught a flash of steel from Orseis’ ambusher before she sank into the deep snow that was between her island of rock and Orseis.

Bel’s heart rattled in her chest as she sank below the surface. A surge of adrenaline coursed through her and she felt like she was burning up, even though she was practically encased in cold. The moment that the surface beneath her feet stopped giving way, Bel pounced again. The poor footing meant that she barely cleared the snow before she started falling into it again.

Her fall was arrested as Cress swooped in and grabbed her under the arms, hauling them both through the air with rapid beats of her wings. The other gorgon did something to the air and a breeze pushed them from behind while the air ahead of them split around their passage.

Now that her sight wasn’t blocked, Bel strained to see what had happened. The ground around Orseis’ feet had crumbled away, and both she and her attacker had disappeared.

Did they fall into a sudden sinkhole? Did someone use an ability?

Bel scanned the ground to see where they had gone and a flicker of movement caught her eye.

Somehow Orseis had propelled herself high up on the cliff overlooking her original spot. She was taking advantage of the high ground to hurl boulders into the hole that she’d left behind. Bel thought she saw blood in the snow around the cuttlegirl and clenched her teeth with frustration.

Cutting rocks with a sword is stupid, Orseis griped to herself as she thrust her injured tentacle – cut short by just a few suckers – into the snow to sooth the stinging.

Her trap had almost worked – a dropped boulder had pulled the parachute free of its light restraints, revealing a rocky chasm below it. She’d been holding onto a cord taken from the parachute that was passed over a tree clinging to the side of the cliff and then tied to yet another boulder. When that boulder dropped she’d been jerked upwards towards the tree, and she used that momentum to launch herself into the air.

The goal of her mess of hide, cord, and rocks was to open up a pit and then launch herself away from it. Her attacker fouled up the launching part of her plan by slashing the air with his sword and projecting a cutting force that sliced straight through her cord before she’d fully accelerated. He’d tried to slice her in half too, but she’d been holding onto a protective rock and had used it to block his attack, although she’d lost the tip of one of her tentacles in the exchange.

She would have considered it an even trade if he’d then fallen to his death in the bottom of the rocky pit, but instead the uncooperative scum-sucker had spread his arms to reveal large swatches of fabric that allowed him to glide over the chasm.

God-cursed cultists, why do they have all the nice stuff? Our parachute wasn’t even fit to be a blanket anymore!

Orseis angrily hurled boulders at the persistent wolf-man, wincing in pain every time she grabbed something with her injured tentacle. To her immense frustration, he simply cut through them.

I’ve got six tentacles, damn it, stop swinging your sword so quickly!

Despite her best efforts, Orseis knew she was running out of energy and rocks, and the cultist was getting closer. Her pupils dialed as her hearts accelerated their pumping. Her mind raced to find of a way out of her mess.

She had nothing though – nothing but throwing more rocks.

I should have decided to get smarter weeks ago, she lamented, maybe then I wouldn’t be so–

The swordsman leaned forward and his body warped through the air between them. Orseis shouted in surprise and launched several tentacles full of rocks at him, but a blur of metal reduced them all to pebbles. Her eyes widened at the sharp edge of his sword descended upon her defenseless body.

And then his sword bit the air in front of her but stopped short – a spear had rammed through his leg and pinned him in place. A wild woman followed, her hair full of hissing snakes as she slammed into him and forced him to the ground.

Orseis watched in shock, horror, and then relief as the wolf-man’s sword swung straight through the newcomer’s arm but passed through without doing any damage. The wild woman – Bel, Orseis realized belatedly – laughed.

“Eat crow Nebamon!” she shouted, before punching him in the chest with a force that visibly warped his body. A second blow reduced his center of mass to a messy smear on the rocks.

“Holy shit,” Orseis marvelled, “Bel, your timing was perfect!”

Orseis recognized her friend, but something about Bel was looking fierce. Even her snakes looked more serious than she remembered.

She’s nothing at all like the confused girl that I first met back on the Golden Plains. And she’s gotten Crystal’s spear too. She must have taken care of things already.

Orseis slumped back on the ground, weakness stealing over her body once she realized that she was safe. She barely mustered the energy to look up when a second person landed on the mountain. She squinted at the winged woman’s snakes.

“Two of you?” she moaned. “That means even more trouble, doesn’t it?”

She grinned despite her complaint. Finding more gorgons was part of Lempo’s plan, after all.

It looks like we’re headed in the right direction, Orseis thought with satisfaction.