Outside Influences

Bel relaxed and stretched out to embrace the dim light of Olympos’ fifth layer. It’s good to pause like this sometimes, she decided.

Everything has been crazy: I was captured by giants, channeled my little magma snake to temporarily turn into some kind of spirit, barely survived a fight with patchwork Crystal, took her fantastic spear, finally met another gorgon, and splattered my nemesis, Nebamon, across the mountain. I was so exhausted that I went to sleep after introducing Cress and Orseis.

Bel frowned slightly at the thought. Was I being rude? I was so tired though. Cress seems nice, I’m sure she’ll understand.

Someone thumped a rock into Bel’s wooden belly, demanding her attention. Bel opened her eyes to see Orseis picking up a larger rock.

“What are you doing?” she asked incredulously. “Do you hit people with rocks whenever you aren’t getting enough attention?”

The shameless cuttle-girl dropped the rock and rolled her eyes. “You weren’t responding to shouting, so I thought that I should turn to violence.”

She turned and gestured a tentacle at Cress. The other gorgon was doing some kind of swinging exercise with her hammer. “Even she thinks swinging her hammer around is more fun than waiting for you to come back to normal. How long are you planning to stay in your tree form?”

Bel shook her leaves at the immature girl. “You asked me to try out my Flora form after I told you what happened with I mixed with Sparky.”

“Gods in the heavens, I didn’t think that you would turn into a tree and just sit there,” Orseis grumbled. “It’s been hours.”

Bel sighed and ended her ability. Flora’s essence slowly separated from Bel’s and in a few moments her flower-laden serpent was back on her head with the rest of her snakes.

“Was it really hours?” Bel asked. “It was shorter with Sparky.”

“Well, you weren’t doing much moving around as a tree,” Orseis pointed out. “Maybe that has something to do with it.”

Bel nodded. “Maybe. I was just enjoying the light.”

She turned to inspect the distant pillar that provided sterile illumination for the snowy layer of Olympos. “I wonder if the light feels even better somewhere brighter and warmer.”

“Ugh, just don’t test it when I’m around. I’ll die of boredom.”

“You’re such a child, Ori,” Bel teased. “You need one of those things that James always talks about, an Internet.”

“Don’t call me Ori,” Orseis whined.

Crecerelle cleared her throat, and Bel suddenly remembered that her group was now three instead of two.

“Sorry Cress! Ori can be pretty distracting.”

“That’s not my name!”

Cress smiled and said something that sounded cheerful and encouraging, but of course Bel and Orseis couldn’t understand it.

Bel smiled back since expressions were the only things that didn’t require words. “We’re going to have to learn each other’s languages,” Bel mused aloud.

“Oh, oh,” Orseis squirmed with excitement. “Teach us both James’ Old World language.”

“English?” Bel asked, perplexed. “Why would you want to learn that?”

“Because you said that your mother promised that I could go to the Old World,” Orseis huffed. “She promised that at the same time she told you to find more gorgons to help fight Technis, right?”

Orseis gestured at Cress’ snakes. “There’s a gorgon, so I guess your mom wasn’t messing around. If I go to the Old World, I want to be prepared.”

Bel groaned. “I don’t really understand the words that James uses though.”

And I don’t know how safe it is to trust my mother, she thought silently. What if the humans use her for her ink?

Her brother had told Bel plenty of stories about how the old world humans extracted everything they could from the world around them. She didn’t have the heart to say those things to Orseis, though.

Orseis shrugged at Bel’s spoken objection, a ripple travelling down her six tentacles. “Just do your best to teach us, I’m sure it’ll be good enough. Anyway, my body will be doing most of the talking when I meet the humans there.”

The cuttle girl struck what Bel guessed was supposed to be a tough or attractive pose, but in her matching fluffy halter top, skirt, and moccasins Bel thought that she looked more childlike than ever.

Bel pushed her face into her palms, stifling a groan. “You’re too young to talk about stuff like that.”

“But cuttlefish–”

“You’re at least half human, Ori. And your human parts look like a child.”

Orseis pouted. Her cheeks puffed out dramatically while her skin flashed an angry white and red pattern.

Cress asked something, her concern clear from the tone of her voice.

“We’re fine,” Bel assured her. “But I guess we should start learning how to speak together.”

Bel looked around, wondering where to start. She pointed to the snow that covered the floor of the layer. “Snow,” she said in English.

It turned out that teaching a language by pointing at things didn’t work well in a world smothered in snow. It was great for drawing pictures – the only way that she’d been able to explain her plan to sneak under Technis’ Barrier and reenter Satrap – but the moment her group began walking back to the downward staircase she had run out of things to point at. Everyone knew the words for “snow,” “rock,” and “footprint,” but after that Bel had struggled.

She could explain things to Orseis of course, but then Cress would be left out, so now she was making a fool of herself by miming different actions.

“What in the hells are you doing, Bel?” Orseis asked, bewildered.

“I’m winking,” Bel explained.

Unlike Orseis, Cress was happily copying the one-eyed blink. “Wink,” she repeated cheerfully.

“It looks like you two have something in your eye. Why would humans do that?”

“Oh!” Orseis smacked two of her tentacles together, a sure sign that Bel knew meant the cuttle girl had just come to a wrong conclusion.

“Do humans have a special eye abilities like you gorgons?”

Bel sighed. “Let’s just move on to something else. Did I tell you that James is teaching the young people back in the Golden Plains? Maybe you should just learn English from him once we get back there.”

Orseis rolled her eyes dramatically. “I don’t want to learn all the stuff he’s teaching though. Doesn’t it involve a bunch of weird things about dividing people into tiny pieces?”

“Do you mean cells? That’s biology.”

Bel looked at Orseis skeptical expression. “It’s interesting,” she insisted.

“Did you know that some of his students think that the world is hollow?”

Orseis barked out a sudden laugh. It startled Cress, and Bel saw her hand twitch towards her hammer before she relaxed.

“They think that’s why the gravity is going down the farther we go.”

“Why would a hollow world do that?”

Bel scrunched her nose. “Math?”

She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the mountain housing the giants’ cave appear in the distance.

“Hey, look,” she pointed, “we’re almost there.”

Bel pounced ahead, forcing Orseis to rush to catch up. Cress easily covered the distance with the powerful flaps of her wings, but unlike Bel and Orseis she kept a vigilant gaze on the landscape around them.

I wonder if we’ve gotten complacent after being here for so long? Bel wondered. Would my mother mind if we took a break? Yeah, I bet she would.

While Bel put her hands on her hips and sighed, Orseis inspected the entrance to the now trashed town. She leaned back to look at the large double-doors, built tall enough for a giant mounted on a large fox worm. The two doors were hanging at an angle, barely attached to the metal frame after Crystal’s assault, and past them she could see the inner doors that were blackened and twisted from a powerful impact.

“Uh, what happened here?”

“Crystal came after me, remember? I was hoping that the giants would get her on the way in, but she was tougher than I thought. If you think it’s bad out here, just wait until we go inside.”

“And you took her out? By yourself?” Orseis said with wide eyes.

“Yup,” Bel nodded proudly. She reached up to give Sparky an appreciative scratch. “With my snake’s help, of course.” Then she made a muscle to show off.

Orseis patted her muscular arm. “Damn Bel, you’ve really grown.”

Bel beamed. “Thanks!”

She took a step towards the yawning opening and hesitated and glanced back at Orseis. “There’s some strong stuff in there, by the way.”

Orseis shrugged. “I’m sure that I’ll be fine.”

Bel remembered the sinking feeling she’d felt when it looked like Nebamon was going to kill Orseis right in front of her. Then she looked down at her spear.

According to Lempo, it was a divine weapon crafted by a goddess named Bellona. It looked like a spear with a long blade and a simple wooden haft, but it could stab through just about anything, including the armor that Kjar had gifted to her, and would return to her hand after she threw it. For Bel, who kept losing her weapons, it was perfect. She could feel it almost like another person, bored and sleepy but eager for battle.

Bel sighed with regret and held out the spear to Orseis.

“Ori, you should take this.”

Orseis’ eyes widened. She reached a tentacle forward but hesitated before touching the smooth haft of the weapon. “Really? Isn’t it powerful?”

Bel nodded sadly. “It is. It’s perfect. But that fight with Nebamon was really close.”

Bel thrust the spear into her friend’s tentacles. “My mother made me strong and I’ve got some powerful abilities now. But none of those will help if someone stabs you when I’m not looking.”

Orseis took the spear eagerly but she frowned at Bel’s words. “I’m not a burden, you know.”

Bel nodded. “Of course not. But I’ve already got a divine gift from Kjar.”

She patted one of the plates of her lamellar armor with a metal nail, making a soft of metal on metal. “Giving you the spear makes things fair.”

Orseis tilted her head as she considered that. “I guess it’s okay then,” she finally agreed.

Then she glanced at Crecerelle, who had been silently listening to their exchange, clearly trying to guess what they were discussing. “What about her?”

Bel laughed. “Cress is pretty tough.”

She pointed to the hammer hanging from Cress’ back. “She’s got a hammer and some awesome claws and I saw her turn a giant into stone! It was fantastic!”

Bel pointed to Cress’ hammer and claws and eyes in order like she was a merchant showing off her wares. She pointed to her wings last. “And she can fly! Flying is amazing!”

Cress figured out that Bel was bragging on her behalf and spread her wings, preening at the praise.

Bel giggled. “It must be a gorgon thing. I’m absolutely going to save up my spare strokes to grow my own wings.”

Orseis rolled her eyes. “As long as you’re not clinging to me because you’ve lost your parachute again.”

Bel snorted. “That was one time. And you got yourself knocked out, what else was I supposed to do?”

“Speaking of doing things,” Orseis said, stepping forward and entering the mountain, “when are you going to choose your next path? Killing Nebamon and breaking his core filled yours up, didn’t it?”

Bel rushed forward a few steps so she could scout ahead of Orseis, much to the younger girl’s annoyance. Cress drew her hammer and stepped to the side, giving herself room to swing it without fear of hitting her two companions.

“I’ll choose my next path when we stop for the night,” Bel explained as she glanced around the dimly lit interior of the mountain. Some of the escaped rock worms had tunneled through the ceiling on their way out, giving the area several new skylights.

“Last time I made an impulse decision after I heard about spirits blowing up the moon–” Bel began.

“Wait, what?” Orseis interrupted.

“–but this time around I think that I should really embrace whatever Kjar or Lempo have to offer,” Bel finished. “Not that Dutcha’s powers aren’t amazing, but I think I may need something stronger to fight Technis.”

Bel squeezed her hands into fists and clenched her jaw. “I was barely strong enough to take down patchwork Crystal, and she was only made by one of Technis’ inquisitors. How could I actually fight Technis himself?”

Orseis hurried forward so she wouldn’t be behind Bel. “But you said that Lempo’s abilities were weird, right?”

Bel nodded. “Yeah, but I’m guessing that Lempo must be offering me weird stuff for a reason.”

She reached up to rub Ventas’ necklace, remembering what the old man had told her about Lempo offering her followers a path to achieve their goals. “I think my mother must be offering me strange abilities because I’ll need something weird to fight Technis. Brute force won’t work, not unless I become literally strong enough to blow up a moon.”

Bel sighed. “And I definitely don’t have time for that.”

There was a sound of metal striking shell. Bel turned to see Cress’ hammer separating a sky shrimp into two halves through overwhelming force. The other gorgon followed up her attack by screaming into the hole where the shrimp had emerged, scaring away whatever else was lurking within.

By the time she turned back to Orseis, the other girl had already grabbed part of the shrimp and was ripping the flesh out of its carapace. Bel’s mouth opened wide in disbelief.

“What?” Orseis snapped. “I’m hungry, okay? Learning all those English words was tough.”