Both of the giant turtle’s heads turned to face Bel with their angry, red eyes. Bel forced down the uneasy feeling of being looked down upon and flicked her gaze between them as she braced for their reprisal. They took longer than she expected to strike, making her wonder if the small jumbles of wires that sat upon their snouts and slid under their eyelids were messing with their reflexes.
The precise yet utilitarian work was familiar to Bel from her time in Technis’ temple: a brute force co-opting of a creature’s mind and senses that whose result was always worse than the original.
Bel’s eyes flicked to lampreys that emerged from the knobs on turtle’s shell that she had earlier mistaken for rocks. Their sickeningly moist bodies were swimming under the turtle’s shell to get from one ambush to the next. There was no way in any hell that they were natural.
“It’s all artificial,” she spat. “Just another one of Technis’ patchwork monstrosities.”
“Great,” Orseis grunted as she pulled Manipule out of reach of a lamprey’s eager mouth. She stabbed her stolen dinner knife through the lamprey’s body to hold it in place while another tentacle whipped forward and struck it with a resounding slap, tearing off its head and spraying ichor like rain. “Does that help you kill it?”
“No,” Bel cried. “But I’ll think of something.”
Bel’s wooden body creaked with frustration as she waved her branches in a futile attempt to disperse some not-birds that were aiming for her eyes. A volley of stones from Sangfroid’s sling arrived a moment later, clearing the area above Bel’s head. Bel nodded thanks to the gorgon guard, but the woman had already moved on to her next attack, her eyes calmly scanning back and forth over the battle.
The turtle’s heads decided that they had seen enough: one of them plunged down at Bel, beak open wide, ready to deliver a killing bite. Bel slapped out with a long, wooden arm to intercept the strike. A surge of essence flowed through the strokes of her core as she condensed the air into a near liquid and released a liquid shockwave that exploded with enough force to make her ears ring.
The turtle’s strike was partially redirected, and its beak scraped against it own shell rather than cutting Bel in half. She didn’t get a reprieve though, as the second beaked head immediately followed the first. Bel repeated her attack, condensing the air and releasing a liquid shockwave just in time to deflect the fatal blow.
To her surprise and dismay, the turtle’s head slowed and dipped at the last moment, diving under her shockwave. It opened its jaws and Bel saw her death in its sharp, angled beak.
Then one of its eyes exploded as Cress swooped low to delivery a powerful shriek. A swarm of not-birds followed hot on her heels, but the other flying gorgon batted them aside with a long spear.
The turtle reared its heads back and let loose a deep, bone-rattling bellow of outrage. The injury triggered something in the turtle, and it lost any semblance of self-control as it descended into a frenzy, beating its heads against it body, crushing gorgons and lampreys alike.
“Down,” Cress yelled, pointing to the ground around the turtle with her maul. She and the other flying gorgon grabbed the two gorgons in Orseis’ tentacles and leaped from the turtle’s back, carrying them to the safety of the forest floor.
Orseis paused a moment as she struggled to rip her spear from the turtle shell before she remembered that she could just resummon it as a cloud of dust. “Are you coming?” she shrieked.
“I’m stuck,” Bel snapped. “My roots are deep into this thing trying to find its heart.” She tilted her head, briefly considering giving up her attack. “You go, I’ll take care of the turtle.”
Orseis was about to object, but then her w-shaped pupils dilated into full moons. Bel could see the oncoming turtle’s neck from its reflection in the girl’s eyes. She swept her arms upwards and deflected it with another liquid shockwave, just barely forcing it to the side before it could mash her into a pulp.
I’ve only got a couple of shockwaves left, Bel cursed.
Orseis’ tentacles curled with fear and she turned nearly invisible, but she moved nearer to Bel. “I’ll stick with you,” she stammered. “But only because you’re my ticket to the Old World.”
Bel turned her head at a sudden surge of hisses. She saw that Cress and the other gorgons had managed to get off of the turtle, but something equally horrible awaited them on the ground. Clark had gotten to the decoy gorgons who had left in the original clay glider, killed them, and reanimated them as his puppets. A dozen mutilated gorgons shambled from the forest, surrounding the living. Each was modified in a different way: some with lampreys for arms, others with insect stingers on their heads in place of their snakes. Each modification was unnecessary and cruel, and completely in keeping with everything she remembered about Clark. They were obviously meant to provoke the surviving gorgons.
More birds joined the battle, perching on the surrounding trees. They opened their mouths and spoke in unison, but in a variety of languages, creating a cheap imitation of Lempo’s voice. Bel kept a focus on her burrowing roots, refusing to be distracted by Clark’s threats.
“You gorgons have made the wrong choice,” he mocked. “Why not surrender? I would love to preserve a few of your bodies in a more complete state for further study.”
Bel snorted at the cheap attempt at intimidation, but frowned when she saw some of the gorgons trembling with fright. She prepared to speak with Kjar’s voice, intending to demonstrate how true power sounded, but another body slam from one of the berserk turtle heads drew her focus. Bel once again deflected the attack, draining her core dangerously close to empty.
Orseis took the opportunity to jump upon the turtle’s head. She wrapped her tentacles around it, suckering herself in place as she repeatedly jabbed her spear and knife into its thick neck. A dark blob of birds dropped from the trees like rotten fruit, opening their wings at the last moment to glide to Orseis at full speed. Stones shot like lightning from Sangfroid’s sling and the birds burst into clouds of feathers and wire before they could reach their target.
The rest of the birds shrieked with outrage, plunging from their perches to dive at Sangfroid. Escalope stepped in front of Fortuit, pushing the honored gorgon a few steps further away from the focus of the attacks. The patchwork gorgon wailed with unnatural voices and rushed at the living, and Cress answered their noises with a bold battle cry.
Bel grit her teeth and forced herself to look away from the shouts and screams, focusing instead on the unburdened turtle head and the progress of her roots towards something vital. The second head was momentarily distracted, doing its best to scrape Orseis from the first head’s neck. The cuttle-girl danced around the beast, swinging around the wide neck on her strong tentacles, but she came close enough to losing a limb enough times that Bel could barely watch. Frantic urgency surged through Bel’s heart as she stabbed and pierced with her roots, until she finally felt the thick pulse of a major artery.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
She didn’t hesitate to unleash her final liquid shockwave. The massive creature resisted her attack, and, instead of reducing its innards to goop, she only accomplished what she guessed was the equivalent of swallowing a sharp stone. She wasn’t done though; the small area of bruising had forced back the creature’s essence, clearing an uncontested area for her to initiate Lempo’s ability to destabilize bonds.
In her experience, the chain reaction usually caused an explosion, blowing a material apart before it could spread too far. Inside the body of the turtle though, its muscle and organs served as fuel for a growing fire that erupted from the holes in the shell like cannon fire from a ship. The lampreys died as one, their bodies cooked in the boiling innards of the turtle, and the turtle itself shrieked in agony: mortally wounded but not yet dead. Orseis whooped fearlessly as she rode the writhing creature, shielding herself from the explosion with the bulk of the turtle’s thick neck.
Bel herself wilted from the damage she’d just caused: her roots were burned away to her feet and her canopy was withering from the rain of still-burning turtle chunks. She used thermal regulation to redirect most of the heat into Sparky’s body, but it was still overwhelming. She felt Flora pull away, separating from Bel’s body and retreating, exhausted, to the snake’s regular place on Bel’s head. Bel slumped against the shell, holding on with shaking hands as the turtle collapsed beneath her. Essence began to roll in from its death and the mass death of the lampreys. The surge in strength was like a spring rain and Bel began to recover, but her weak, quivering body was in no state to help the rest of the fight.
She looked over at the other gorgons, hoping that they were also doing well. They weren’t – several of them had been run through with sharped stakes or savaged by the lamprey hands of their patchwork sisters. Sangfroid was launching volleys of exploding missiles at the unending cloud of not-birds, but as Bel watched a thick clump of them descended to her side.
Another gorgon stepped into their path, brandishing a pair of heavy knives, but when she thrust a weapon into the clot of birds a hand emerged and grasped her around her wrist. Before she could make a noise, Clark’s other arm swung his staff through her head, instantly killing her.
Bel watched helplessly as the rest of Clark emerged from the concealing avian cloak and pointed his staff at Sangfroid. A light bloomed on the tip of his staff as Sangfroid spun to face him. Her normally sleepy express was replaced by one of shock as a cone of light erupted from Clark’s weapon, consuming the gorgon from the waist up. Clark cackled with delight as what remained of Sangfroid’s lower body collapsed into the ground.
Escalope was upon him before Bel had fully drawn a gasp of horror. The warrior’s coiling shield whipped out, but was deflected by Clark’s staff. Then her sword swung towards his throat, but a knot of birds mobbed her arm, slowing the attack enough that he ducked beneath it.
Bel could see Clark’s grin even from a hundred strides away. She desperately pushed herself down the turtle’s shell, but it was too late. Clark spun in place, and a tail of sharpened metal cut straight through Escalope’s neck, beheading her.
Bel screamed with impotent rage. Clark pivoted on his heel and flicked some dirt from his robe.
“Well, you can’t say I didn’t–” he began, but his words were cut short when Escalope’s body kicked him in the back of the knees. He stumbled forwards, whipping blinding backwards with his tail.
A swipe of the headless gorgon’s sword tore it from his body, and it was Clark’s turn to yell with wordless fury. Bel doubted that he had felt a thing – ripping his nerves and feelings from his body seemed like the first thing a younger Clark would have done – but he clearly hadn’t expected Escalope to keep fighting without her head.
Clark caught the next swing of the armored warrior’s sword with his staff, but her other arm whipped her shield forward. The metal uncoiled and whipped around one of Clark’s legs. With a twist of her hand the metal clenched, tearing through his limb with a horrific snap, leaving behind a stump of wire and flesh that leaked oil and blood. The tines of her sword spun, eating into his staff as she forced the one-legged man backwards.
The remaining patchwork gorgons abandoned their fighting, mindlessly rushing to Clark’s rescue. Most were cut down on the way as they tried to rush past the living gorgons, but a couple managed to ram into Escalope with their dying inertia. Clark released his mostly broken staff and fell backwards into a cloud of not-birds. With a chorus of angry cawing, the birds took flight, Clark’s body somehow concealed among them.
Escalope’s headless body flicked her sword with frustration. She stomped back to her severed head, grabbed it by the ornamented helmet, and lifted it back to her neck. With a snap of bone and squelch of flesh it reattached. She immediately turned her head and spat into the ground. She waved her sword and briefly cursed in the fleeing Clark’s direction before stomping back to Fortuit, who had waited out the battle in the hollow of a nearby tree.
Bel slumped to the ground, filled with an overwhelming sense of shame. I’m supposed to be better than this, right?
She looked around for her friends. She was worried that something had happened to them while she wasn’t looking, but also worried that they would be blaming her for their failure. Orseis was collecting small bits of cooked turtle and nibbling on them with an empty expression. It looked like she was moving reflexively to refill her depleted stores, but her mind was somewhere else. Bel tried to catch her eye, but the small cuttle-girl was staring at the ground as she shuffled forward, her tentacles wrapped protectively around her body.
Bel couldn’t muster the strength to go to Orseis, and instead looked for Cress. She found the other gorgon among a cluster of corpses, tiredly checking each one of them for vital signs. She wasn’t even glancing in Bel’s direction.
But why should she be? This isn’t just about me anymore.
Bel dug down deep into her resolve and forced herself up on shaking legs. She stumbled towards the closest gorgons with injuries – really, any gorgon would do since they all had injuries. She laid her hands upon a tall woman with long, dark snakes trailing down her back. The other gorgon tensed and looked up at Bel’s touch, but quickly relaxed. She had a wide, circular gash going around her arm that she had been squeezing shut, but Bel was able to easily seal it with her coagulation abilities. The woman nodded her thanks while Bel checked her over for additional injures.
After fixing what she could, Bel moved on to the next gorgon. It didn’t take long – only six gorgons were left, not counting Cress, Fortuit, and Escalope. Cress had pressed Manipule into service setting a few broken limbs, but there wasn’t much any of them could do for one gorgon who had lost most of an arm or the other gorgon whose leg looked so damage that Bel feared she would lose it.
A deep, rhythmic chanting sent a shiver up Bel’s spine. She looked up, expecting more trouble, but it was just Fortuit going about her grisly task. The honored gorgon went from body to body, selecting pieces of the dead to add into her rapidly filling clay egg. Escalope hovered protectively over her, glaring angrily into the forest around them.
“You look rough, Bel,” Cress’ voice asked suddenly, “are you well?”
Bel blinked, surprised that Cress had somehow sneaked up on her.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, “I guess I was spacing out.”
Cress nodded knowingly, and reached out to put a reassuring arm on Bel’s shoulder. “Here in the Underworld these things happen. That is why we gorgons must be tough.
Cress thumped her maul into the ground, obviously trying to convince herself and Bel of her words. “Clark has learned that we are a dangerous people to fight.”
Bel shook her head. “No, I don’t think he learned that at all. I don’t think he was even here.”
Cress tilted her head. “I am maybe misunderstanding your words. Clark – that man – he was right here.” She tapped the ground with her foot.
Bel shook her head more emphatically. “No. Whatever was here, it didn’t glow in Kjar’s Sight like I know the real Clark would. That was just a puppet or something.”
Cress’ lips pressed together. “We’ll talk more of that after we rest,” she finally said. Bel could see Cress’ disappointment, like dust layered thick over her friend’s heart.
Bel remembered the last time she’d brought trouble upon her friends: she’d been travelling with Beth and James and Daran across the Golden Plains when the Dark Ravager’s cultists had attacked. She ran to lead them away, was captured, and then Kjar used her to get to the Dark Ravager himself. If I’d had faith in my divine parents and their plans, maybe I could have finished things there without so much trouble.
She rubbed the scar that went across her face, a reminder of her own failures. I wonder if Kjar and Lempo have a plan this time?
Bel looked down at her hands. They were crusted with blood and dirt, but there were still places where her sharp, metallic nails shone with a brilliant sheen.
“Me,” she muttered to herself. “I’m the plan.”
Bel hadn’t wanted to take on Kjar’s mantle. She didn’t want to constantly judge things for being right or wrong, or be consumed by a constant need for retribution. In that moment though, she had a bunch of free strokes and wanted nothing more than to burn the wicked.
She cleared her throat. “Hey Cress, Clark or not, I’m gonna go hunt that thing down.”