“Are you sure it’s safe?” Beth asked. She was hanging over James’ shoulder and poking at his communication transceiver.
He batted her hand away. “Yes, it’s fine,” he insisted. “Martinus and I have been over the design multiple times.”
Beth’s eyes narrowed. “But can you trust him?”
“Gods, Beth, you’ve asked that every minute for the past week.”
“It hasn’t been a week,” she insisted. “You’ve been taking too long to get this thing working.”
James pushed her back a step. “Then stop breaking it with your poking!” He waved his hands at the loose wires pooling across the table. His device had started as a gold-wrapped core that had been carefully extracted from a pack hunting creature that communicated silently with it brethren and grown into a jumble of parts from no less than seven different magical beasts. “All the work I’ve done with Martinus is very delicate.”
The one-armed assassin pointed an accusatory finger in his direction. “You’ve been chatting with that untrustworthy guy too much. I’m sure you could have devised more tools to stave off Technis’ forces and fixed your talking stone’s security on your own without his constant yammering. It’s been taking up so much time that even Daran is complaining that you’ve been neglecting her.”
“I–what?” James spluttered. He looked over Beth’s shoulder to where his wife was waiting across the room.
Her antennae whirled with agitation as she lifted herself up and waved her hands in denial. “Your sister exaggerates! I only complained once! Only when our daughter was being particularly troublesome!”
James gave Daran his best serious, responsible husband expression. “If I’m doing something that bothers you, please tell me Daran. Communication is an important–”
Beth gagged. “Oh, Durak’s spit, please stop when I’m in the room,” she complained. “I’ll leave if you two want to make loud forgiveness love. But before that, can we please call Bel?”
James spun to the aggravating woman. “You’re the one who was delaying – no, you’re just messing with me now.”
He reached over to his calling apparatus. It had been growing increasingly complicated as he made the additions necessary to upgrade its security, so now he had to spin a few knobs and click several levers into place before speaking into a small grid of stones.
“Bel?” he said. “Bel, can you hear me?”
A few moments passed. Daran scuttled closer as the tension in the room built up. With a faint crackle, Bel’s voice finally answered.
“James! Finally! When we get back, you need to make it so I can call from my side.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “There are a lot of things that I should add. I’ve been working with Martinus to obscure your location, but I can’t do anything to stop someone from listening in, so don’t tell me anything important.”
“Oh, is that why your voice sounds like you’re at the bottom of a hole?”
James shrugged. “Maybe. Martinus launched a bunch of signal repeaters into the area, and we’re using those to disguise the source of the signal. He’ll have to keep launching new ones if we want to keep your location secret though.”
“Oh, Martinus,” Bel repeated with delight, “you need to give him something nice in return for him buying Stion a new knife.”
James looked at Beth and Daran, wondering if he’d forgotten something important. The two of them shrugged. “A new knife? For what?” he asked.
“Because Ori stole one,” Bel quickly responded. “It’s important that it be replaced.”
After a tiny pause Bel responded to someone on her side of the call. “Yes, we’re talking about you. I’m telling everyone what a bad girl you’ve been.”
James rolled his eyes and touched a small stone. “I really need to put a mute on her side too.”
Beth nodded in agreement, but Daran reached forward and removed James finger from his own mute.
“Bel, it is Daran. Has Orseis done something bad?”
“Oh, hi Daran! She’s fine, just some mischief. I hope James has been good.”
Daran clapped her hands together. “Oh, your brother has been great! His school has gained much respect among the–”
“No,” Beth interrupted. “We are not spending this entire conversation gossiping about James. Bel, what’s the situation down there?”
“Aw,” Bel complained. “But you just told me to avoid discussing anything important.”
She sighed dramatically. “Well, I killed Clark, but I’m certain that he was just a puppet of the real Clark.”
James opened his mouth, but Beth spoke first. “That sounds right. We’ve seen plenty of fake people up here too. Technis is a many-headed snake.”
“Hey,” Bel replied irritably. “Snakes are great. I’ve got a lot of friends with snakes.”
“You know what I meant,” Beth snorted.
“And you know what you said wrong,” Bel replied. “Anyway, do you have any clue how close Technis is to opening a portal to the Old World?”
James threw up his arms. “How would we figure that out? We’re doing our best just holding our ground up here.”
“Too bad,” Bel sighed. “I wish I knew how much time I have to get up there.”
“Not as much as you want,” Beth said darkly. “You’d better hurry.”
“Yeah, of course,” Bel replied glumly.
Then her tone brightened. “Okay, that’s everything that I think is safe to discuss, so let’s get back to gossiping. How’s little baby Bel doing?”
James and Daran beamed as they prepared to flood the conversation with every detail of their daughter. Beth leaned away with exaggerated disgust.
----------------------------------------
Bel removed her hand from her earring, finally ending the much anticipated call. A content smile spread across her face and she felt a small knot of tension uncurl in her stomach.
“So is everything fine up there?” Orseis asked. “You weren’t secretly talking about me, right?”
Bel grinned back. “Yup,” she replied.
“To which one?”
“Yup,” Bel repeated.
Orseis’ cheeks puffed as she pouted. She crossed her tentacles and huffed angrily, but from the playful crinkling of her eyes Bel knew that Orseis wasn’t actually upset. Bel took a moment to examine her young companion’s face and was pleased to notice a fullness to her cheeks that had been missing. The young semi-human was looking happier and healthier than she had at the start of their journey together.
A lot of that came from Manipule, who had been pampering the immature cuttlegirl after her drinking incident. As an apology, she made Orseis a set of clothing from the skin of an ambush creature that blended in with the trees. Now, with careful control of her tentacle colors and texture, Orseis could do a halfway decent impression of a bare tree. She loved it.
Manipule was also showing Oresis and Bel how to process the local forage into food. This mostly ended up with the gorgon feeding the results to Orseis, since both Bel and Orseis lacked Manipule’s abilities. Bel worried that they were being a nuisance, but Cress explained that Manipule had nothing else to do. Once Fortuit handed the egg to her and began working on a new one, Manipule had no choice but to continue carrying it until Fortuit took it back. The other gorgons, Escarole in particular, frowned upon Manipule doing any task that could endanger the egg, so she had to find something to do while the others went hunting and gathering.
Stolen novel; please report.
Bel had expected the gorgons to spend more time mourning their dead, but to her surprise they seemed to get over Clark’s ambush after the accelerated bout of mourning that had included Orseis’ ill-fated experiment with heavy drinking. Most of the gorgons had returned to their previous nature, laughing and joking and squeezing her muscles while they tried to get Bel drunk at the ends of their days, in spite of Cress’ scolding.
Cress was one of the few who seemed changed by their losses. The serious gorgon looked like she was unravelling bit by bit from the responsibilities of leading the group, but despite the twitchy rattles on her snakes she was developing a firm, upright bearing that the other gorgons could lean upon. Whenever Bel had a chance to talk with her, she seemed excited and hopeful about their chances of making it to the Outerworld. Every day of walking brought the Pillar closer, until the faintly glowing cylinder filled a large swath of sky. Cress pointed to it with excitement and rallied the other gorgons with some words of encouragement at the start of each day and again before they slept for the night.
Bel wished she shared the other gorgon’s optimism.
It wasn’t that Bel didn’t have faith in her mother’s plans, it was that she knew Lempo probably didn’t view death with the same aversion as a living mortal would. At least James and Beth are doing well, she consoled herself.
Bel looked up at the sprawling, curving Underworld, marvelling at the incredible sights that were visible in the distance. Once she climbed the pillar and returned to Olympos she might never return. The thought filled her with an unexpected sense of regret. The Underworld was so big, and she had seen so little of it – what other fascinating sights and people was she missing out on?
Bel nudged Orseis. Do you regret leaving when there’s so much more to see?”
“No,” Orseis replied instantly. “The ocean is huge, but you don’t see me swimming with the sharks. Weren’t you listening to Cress’ story about some of the things that happen down here?” She waved her tentacles. “Floating monsters so large that people become trapped on them? Areas turned into wastelands by battles between creatures that go on for hundreds of years? Evil spawn of dark gods that want to destroy anything living?”
Bel rolled her eyes. “And here I thought you were adventurous. Once we reach the Pillar, it will be a straight shot back to Satrap and whatever nightmare is happening up there. We could be back in a week.”
Orseis laughed. “Bel, if you believe that going through Pillar is going to be fast and easy, then I’m worried about your memory.”
Bel frowned and pointed ahead. “Come on, the Pillar is right there. We’ll reach it in a minute. Cress promised that those tokens will give us access straight through to the top. What could go wrong?”
----------------------------------------
“Forgeries,” the prim clerk said curtly as she shoved the pile of discs back through a slot in her window.
“All of them?” Bel asked, incredulous. If they weren’t speaking the divine tongue, Bel would have asked her repeat herself.
Half of the clerk – a person who looked like a man and a woman sewed together, back to back – gave Bel a look that would have withered a tree in full bloom. “Most of them.”
Bel wondered if being two people at once allowed her to be twice as frustrating as a regular person.
The rest of the gorgons had decided that Bel should talk to the secretary that guarded the Pillar. Their reasoning had made sense at the time, but now Bel suspected that they didn’t want to deal with this. Now though, Bel was stuck in the cramped room inside the Pillar, arguing with a petty bureaucrat who sat smugly on the other side of some kind of unbreakable glass window. The fact that all of the gorgons had placed their faith – and futures – in her hands injected resolve into her spine.
“Well, can you at least tell me which ones are real?” Bel demanded.
“Are you sure you want me to send these for official inspection? There’s a hefty fine for carrying forgeries,” the woman responded.
“Right, Karl?” she called over her shoulder.
“You got it,” the male half of her replied. He was busy flipping through the papers in a tall cabinet and only seemed to pay attention to his female half when she dragged them back towards the window and away from his work. Bel thought that their biology looked like a nightmare, but maybe it worked better when they were alone.
“What’s the point of all this anyway?” Bel groaned, gesturing to their messy office. “Why can’t we just climb this Pillar? They’re overrun with scrattes and stuff near the surface anyway.”
The woman gained an evil glint in her eyes as she dragged herself closer to the window. Her male half threw up his arms in disgust when the sudden movement scattered a folder’s worth of papers across the ground.
“The gods created Olympos to preserve the diversity of life from the Old World, both natural and mythical,” she lectured. “The Asura and their allies,” she proclaimed proudly, tapping her fingers to her chest, “have taken up the divine mission of regulating passage between the layers of Olympos to preserve the integrity of those ecosystems.”
She slammed her hands onto the small shelf on her side of the window. “Now, you may wonder why that’s important, and the answer is that we need to protect the gods’ work from people like you, who will simply hunt the tastiest things to extinction, or adopt some awful creature as a pet and bring it where it doesn’t belong.”
The woman made a shooing motion with her hands. “So scram. We don’t want your problems.”
Bel didn’t move. “Look, I’m kind of on a divine quest. Does that make a difference? Since, like you said, you’re doing this for the gods.”
The woman narrow her eyes and pointed at a small metal plate above her glass window. From what Bel could see, it was covered with some gibberish that may have been writing.
“You’re in the wrong line,” she scolded. “The line for divine problems is over there.”
She pointed to another window adjacent to her own before rolling her eyes. “Karl,” she muttered, “you would not believe the things that some people do.”
Bel waited for her anger to slowly settle slow down, letting the tension in her body pass before she made her second attempt. She knew from experience that climbing up on her own wouldn’t be easy, even if she would rather fight an army of monsters than deal with self-important impediments. She had to get back quickly and stop Technis; what was a small battle with bureaucracy compared to that?
Once Bel felt that she was mostly calm, she scooped the possibly worthless tokens back into her bag and walked to the adjacent window. There was a small bell in front of it, which she picked up and rang. The pleasant jingle was immediately followed by the woman’s cursing as the man spun in place, this time spilling her papers around their small room.
He proceeded to the window and looked her up and down while his female half desperately clutched at a few papers that were still drifting through the air.
“This is the line for divine problems,” he declared in a stern monotone. “Are you sure that you’re in the correct line?”
“Yes,” Bel replied, suppressing her irritation.
“There is a heavy fine for misfiling,” he added.
“I’m sure that I’m here for a divine problem,” Bel insisted.
“Right.”
The man reached out and plucked a small sheet of paper and a quill from an alcove in his side of the wall. “What is the nature of your divine quest?”
“Um… to go to Satrap, I suppose? And kill a guy named Technis. Oh, and bring along some, uh, disciples.”
He made some notes on the paper with a few efficient slashes of the quill and dipped it in an inkwell. “Is your uncertainty due to the confusing nature of communication with your sponsoring deity, or is it from the unreliability of the deity itself?”
Bel blinked a few times. “Huh?”
The man sighed. “Does your method of divine communication involve drug-induced visions? Those tend to be unreliable. Alternatively, if your sponsoring deity is a trickster, or one that may be a trickster while claiming otherwise, all of the information you tell us is suspect.”
“Oh,” Bel said, relieved, “neither of those. My mother is reliable, she just prefers to hold some information back. She wants me to make my own decisions rather than just doing what she tells me.”
The man’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Your mother?”
“Yes. Sorry, my mother is the goddess who sent me on my quest.”
The man crumpled up the paper and grumbled under his breath. “That’s a different form, miss.”
He snatched a fresh piece of paper and glared at her. The tips of his glossy mustache practically quivered. “Let’s begin again. The name of the deity that spawned you is…?”
“Lempo,” Bel answered confidently.
“Well,” she hesitated, “Lempo made my body, I think. Kjar had to fix some parts. She breathed on my core, so I guess some of her is in here somewhere.”
Bel gestured to herself. “And Dutcha added something too.”
Bel grabbed one of her snakes. “She gets into my mind through these girls sometimes.”
The man rolled his neck and cracked his knuckles like he was preparing for battle. Then his hand flew across the paper as he marked down a series of notes at blinding speed. Bel watched with a growing sense of awe as the marks multiplied and the ink overwhelmed the paper, turning it from a yellow sheet with a few black marks to a black sheet with a few empty spaces.
He cleared his throat as he examined his work. “Just to double-check,” he said, “Lempo is the goddess of change and upheaval, Kjar is a goddess of retribution, and Dutcha is a spirit of chaos who was forced to ascend because of…”
He glanced over at something pinned to the wall. “Due to some mischief. She is currently confined to the divine realm.”
“Oh, that’s not right,” Bel said. “Dutcha is hiding on an island, terrorizing some elves.”
Bel wondered if she had just gotten her mother into trouble when the man’s pen began flying over a second sheet of paper.
“I mean,” Bel frantically added, “that’s the last that I heard. I’m not sure what she’s up to now.”
“Yes, noted,” the man muttered. He joined the two sheets of paper together with a small, metal clip, pulled open the cover to a small chute, and tossed them inside.
Bel was just about to ask what came next when a second chuted opened on its own and disgorged a neatly folded paper. The woman deftly caught it as it flew through the air. She took a quick glance a clicked her tongue loudly. “Looks like trouble,” she lilted as she handed it over.
The man looked down at the paper and shrugged. “Sure, it looks like your story checks out. You’ve got five challengers who pre-filed objection to your passage. They’ve all asked for a fight to the death.”
He clapped his hands. “So once that’s dealt with you can either pass through or you’ll be dead.”
He nodded and gave her a businesslike smile. “Shall we get started?”