Through her newfound sense, Bel could feel patterns for potential abilities, like intricate constellations hanging over her core. Walking and concentrating on them at the same time was proving to be a struggle for her though. James tugged her away from the wall, saving her from a head-on collision for what had to have been the tenth time in as many minutes.
“You need to put down your phone before you get hit by a car, Bel.”
She stared at him blankly for a few heartbeats. “…what? Is that some otherworld joke?”
“Don’t tease your sister, James.” Beth looked at them, her lips pursed. “He’s not wrong though, it takes practice to examine your core while still keeping your attention on the world around you. You’d best stop until we can take a break.”
“But there’s all this stuff in there!” Bel whined.
“Just wait a minute,” Beth commanded. “We’ll soon reach a smaller side passage where we’ll be safe from the larger threats.”
Her excitement boiling over like an unwatched pot as they walked in silence. She turned to her brother and squealed to him in English, the language of excitement and nonsense. “I’m gonna get some cool magic, and then I’ll become overpowered like those people in the stories you like!”
She squeezed her hands together, wringing exuberance from the air. A pair of her hair snakes danced in the flickering light of James’ headlamp, clearly picking up on her mood. “Maybe I’ll get more powers that have to do with my eyes,” she speculated, “like those people you talk about!”
“Eyes that shoot beams of light! Eyes that shoot people’s clothes off! Eyes that shoot sharks!”
“That last one doesn’t make any sense,” James replied glumly. “And you mean x-ray vision so you can see through clothes, not eye beams that literally make people naked.”
The melancholy in his expression made Bel feel like an insensitive clod. Her snakes immediately settled down, sheepishly peering at her brother from over her shoulder. “Sorry James, I didn’t mean to rub it in your face.”
He held up a hand. “No, it’s cool. I’m excited for you, I just wish that I could get magic too.” He put on an encouraging smile for her. “Don’t let me drag you down though. You’ll just have to learn enough cool stuff for the both of us.”
She gave him a thumbs up. “I’ll learn so much cool stuff that it’ll blow your socks off.”
James looked down at his feet, the light of his headlamp illuminating their current footwear. “Pretty hard since we’re both wearing sandals. God, I’d kill for a few pairs of decent socks and some sneakers.”
Beth shined her light down a side passage and pointed into it. “Okay, kids, into the scary side tunnel.”
“What makes it so–”
A crunching noise beneath her feet interrupted Bel’s question. She looked down to see that she’d just shattered the rib cage of some headless, human-sized torso.
“They’re old, so it should be fine,” Beth reassured them. The unfazed assassin waved them forward. “Come on, these smaller passages are safer since the big stuff won’t fit.”
Bel wrapped her hand around her short sword as she proceeded. Just in case.
She focused her attention on the path ahead of them as the new passage split from the wider one at a gradual angle. As they progressed, Bel got the impression that they were spiraling downwards, which struck her as being more than a little ominous.
“Let’s stop here,” Beth called out. “It’s unlikely that something will be able to attack us from both sides, and this tunnel is small enough that our lights can keep the entire thing lit. Just put your lantern on the far side, Bel, and then your brother and I will keep watch while you see what abilities are in reach. Just don’t do anything until you tell me about your options.”
Bel nodded eagerly and rushed to drop her lantern. She hurried back to Beth’s side and sat down in the dry soil so that she could fully concentrate upon her core. Closing her eyes helped, so a moment later she was leaning back against the curved wall like she was ready to take a nap.
She relaxed her body, but her heart was racing far too quickly for sleep. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted to have abilities like Beth. She hadn’t believed that it would happen, so she’d tried to avoid thinking about it. Now that it was real…
Bel felt through her core and felt a tug from the constellations that were just out of reach. Her inner senses directed her to four different celestial objects, each with its own distinct shape and feeling. As she cast her attention to each pattern, they seemed to sharpen in her mind’s eye, and her impressions of each one became more distinct.
The first set of stars felt natural to her, as though they were nearly part of her body already. She guessed that she had this straightforward constellation because she was a gorgon – a feeling she confirmed when she found a star in the constellation that felt similar to glare. She spent a few moments running her mind over the pattern, eventually getting the intuitive sense that it would somehow expand her glare to work through sound as well as sight. I’ll have to ask James more about his gorgon myths later, she resolved.
Unlike that first constellation, the other three felt foreign – foreign and dangerous. She knew immediately that they were related to the three figures from her half-remembered ritual.
“Hey Beth, you said that a person needs to select a patron before they can collect abilities from different deities, right?”
Beth kept her gaze fixed on the darkness around them, but she shifted a bit to turn her ear towards Bel. Bel noticed that her sister looked just as excited as she felt, her hands alternating between spinning some of her bracelets and gripping the hilts of her daggers.
“Yeah, that’s normal. It’s different for you?” Beth asked hungrily.
“Maybe. What does it mean to select a patron?”
“Well, you get access to new abilities. You also start growing a new core, like a plant forming suckers.” Beth frowned. “Not my best analogy. Anyway, the new core will support your patron’s abilities with fewer strokes. As a downside, a core aligned with a patron god won’t be able to support abilities outside of those that your patron grants.”
Bel scratched idly at one of her snakes as she listened. “What’s that feel like?”
Beth tilted her head and half closed her eyes. “If my unbound path feels like the unfurling of the crisp pages of a new book, Durak’s path feels like the blades of a clasp-knife unfolding. The two are completely separate, and the abilities that Durak grants refuse to engrave upon my unbound path.”
“Huh. Mine feels totally different. There are four, uh, constellations, I guess, that are sort of hovering over my core. Some of them feel weird to me, but I don’t get the sense that they’re incompatible.”
Beth started to turn, but then stopped so that her light was still facing down the tunnel. “Tell me about them,” she demanded eagerly.
“One is from being a gorgon, I think. An ability that I felt does something like glare, but with growls. There are more abilities there, but they’re out of reach.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“That’s because you need more available strokes for those ones,” Beth explained. “You can only sense what you can afford. If you know what’s coming then it isn’t an issue, but I guess we’re all in the dark about your abilities. You have more options though?”
“Yeah. I can feel three more constellations of abilities, and I think they have something to do with the scary people from my ritual.”
Bel could hear James practically vibrating himself to pieces with curiosity, but Beth spoke up first.
“Excellent!”
Smug satisfaction oozed from Beth.
“Tell, me, what abilities are there? Will they help us get through Technis’ Barrier?”
Bel frowned. “I haven’t looked at the abilities yet. I don’t know if I should… What if something bad happens to me?”
Beth waved off the concern. “That’s silly.”
“Whoah, Beth,” James interrupted, “what if they have some trade-off? Like, maybe they eat her memories when she uses them.”
“That’s not how abilities work,” Beth scoffed.
Bel tugged on her snakes with distress. They hissed at her. “But what if they eat my soul?”
Bel couldn’t see her sister’s face, but she was sure that Beth rolled her eyes. “You can’t even remember most of what really happened when you met those goddesses. Maybe that was just an idle threat to keep you motivated. After all, if they were going to eat your soul they would have just done it there.”
She didn’t feel reassured – it was her soul after all, and Beth had a tendency to stab first and think later. Beth wasn’t wrong though; the scary goddesses wouldn’t have told her to do something only to immediately kill her off.
Bel stiffened her resolve. “Okay, I’ll see what they’re offering.”
She closed her eyes again, and pulled up the hood of her cloak to give her snakes somewhere to hide in an attempt to calm their agitation.
The three divine constellations felt powerful. Intimidating. Overwhelming.
Bel tried to look at the first one, but it shifted under her grasp, wriggling like one of her snakes. She decided to leave it for last.
The next one was hot and stifling. She could almost feel it demanding integrity, that she seek out and punish the wicked. A name drifted back to the forefront of Bel’s consciousness: Kjar.
Kjar, goddess of corporal punishment. Bel remembered the scary animal-headed goddess from her vision. She didn’t dwell on the memory, instead turning her attention towards the goddess’ abilities: one to sniff out lawlessness; another to taste the intentions of others; one more to track the hearts of the beings around her. Then there was a wide gulf separating Bel from the next ability.
So, Kjar is the goddess of corporal punishment and weird senses. Got it.
Bel turned her attention to the third divine constellation and… It wasn’t as bad as the shifting she felt from the first one, but it felt as though someone had thrown down a wagon full of random paintings in the middle of a road and called it an art gallery. It didn’t feel at all similar to Kjar’s.
This must be Dutcha, that spirit of chaos.
Bel sifted through the strange sensations and found her options. One would move things around and make a mess… And another bunch would transmute her flesh into fire, liquid, air, or other terrible options. One transmutation per ability, and no way to turn herself back. She would have been interested, but they all seemed like one way trips over the side of a cliff. If she used the liquid one, she would just turn into a puddle of water and stay like that.
So, in summary: no. The divine spirit of chaos is bad for my health.
And that left the first constellation, that one that made her queasy at just a look. Bel tamped down her reservations and forced her attention back to it. For a terrible moment she felt like she’d been turned inside out; then she felt fine.
Was I worried over nothing? she wondered.
When she finally got back to the abilities, she couldn’t tell if they were good or bad. One would disintegrate something, but so slowly that Bel thought a strip of sanding paper would be more practical. Maybe it would be useful if she were a woodworker, but not something that she thought would get through Technis’ impervious Barrier. The next ability would add energy to something, but to what end she couldn’t discern. The next would do something strange to little pieces of her body, allowing them to change in random – and potentially harmful, she guessed – ways. Why anyone would want abilities like those, Bel couldn’t fathom.
“Beth, these abilities are bonkers.”
“Bonkers good?” James asked hopefully.
“Bonkers bonkers. I could turn my body into fire.”
“That doesn’t sound bad,” Beth replied.
“I wouldn’t be able to turn back,” Bel deadpanned.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. There are more abilities that I can’t see, but from the samples so far I think the gorgon ones will be more useful.”
Beth was silent for a few moments. Bel hoped that she wasn’t too disappointed. “You had better list them all out for us. Maybe there’s something interesting that you missed.”
Bel went through the process of feeling out the constellations that hovered over her core yet again, this time detailing what she felt. When she finished, there was a long silence as her siblings considered her options.
“So? What do you think?”
“I think none of those will help us get through the Barrier,” Beth replied. “You can just save up your strokes to see what’s coming later.”
“I’m not sure,” James declared. “Maybe you should take that growl ability that works like your glare. It would be useful down here where things are blind.”
“But only down here,” Beth stressed. “I can take care of you two just fine, so she should focus on the long-term. That means waiting for an ability to get through the Barrier.”
“Do you really think she’s going to get an ability like that without a lifetime of effort? Didn’t you tell us that the Barrier has kept humans trapped inside of Satrap for three thousand years?”
Beth dismissed James’ arguments with an irritated wave of her hand. “Bel will have to choose a Patron after she clears the twentieth threshold. One of these godesses could easily give her a unique, Barrier-piercing ability.”
“Well, one of them is actually a spirit, and another one of them is Lempo. She’s in all the shrines,” Bel interjected.
Beth pressed forward with her arguments. “This isn’t the Lempo we know. If you save all of your core inscription space up until the twentieth threshold then you’ll have a much better idea of what they all do. That will help you make a better choice of patron.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Bel replied. “Kjar wants to hunt people down and rip out their hearts, Dutcha doesn’t give two twirls about anything other than causing chaos, and Lempo is creepy as a hagfish.”
Beth clicked a finger. “But what do those other two want? Between Dutcha and Lempo, which one is more likely to help you get through the Barrier?”
“Well, neither. Their abilities seem to be set up to get me killed.”
“That’s only the ones that you’ve seen so far, Bel.”
“I think I’ll be safer sticking with the gorgon abilities, like our brother says.”
Beth shook her head vigorously. “Don’t be stupid, Bel. Just keep those strokes empty so you can get a better feel for their different abilities. You’ll want to know all you can before you’re ready to form your second core.”
“Hey!” Bel stomped the ground angrily. “I’m not stupid. Why can’t you trust me to make my own decisions? And don’t just say it’s because you’re older and I lived most of my life locked in a cell.”
Beth drew in a long breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay, look, I didn’t want to put any pressure on you, but the truth of the matter is that we’re not just finding a place to hide.”
Bel and James perked up. “We’re not?” they both asked.
Beth jerked her head. “No. We’re going to meet up with some delver friends of mine – people who’ve seen shit, who aren’t so caught up with the pedestrian ideas of normal that keep everyone else in line.”
She spat out “normal” like she’d bitten into something rotten. “We’ll work through them to help the Points in this war against Technis and Satrap. But we need to show them something worthwhile. You need to show them something.”
“Me?” Bel shook her head. “Beth, I can’t show anyone something other than some snakes. Isn’t James’ otherworldly knowledge more valuable?”
Beth held up a calming hand to forestall even more objections. “Yes, of course James’ knowledge will be valuable. Simply explaining how those new flintlock weapons work would be a big step forward.”
Beth’s voice took on a pleading tone. “But Bel, you have to see that overthrowing a god isn’t easy. Even if the Points and the delvers kill every single priest, inquisitor, and enforcer from here to Central City we still wouldn’t win. We need you Bel, to give people hope, to show people that Technis’ power isn’t absolute. Just being able to pass through the Barrier, to acquire supplies from outside so that the resistance can’t be starved, just that little thing would be a huge boost to morale.”
James shook his head. “Getting through the Barrier doesn’t sound like a little thing, Beth.”
Beth opened her mouth to speak, but stopped. She tilted her head, listening.
“What? You can’t think of a response?” James huffed.
Beth held up a hand, gesturing for quiet.
Bel nervously rubbed her palms together. “He’s got a point, Beth. Even if I’m–”
“Shush,” Beth hissed.
“Why–”
Beth clamped one of her hands over Bel’s mouth while the other went to her dagger.
Bel immediately stopped squirming and peered into the darkness beyond their candlelight. Crows, now what?
James drew closer to them, the light from his hat scanning back and forth over the ground.
Beth motioned them back up the passageway, ascending the spiral.
Bel took one step when the ground around her shifted like it was alive. She dropped her lantern to the dirt and quickly drew her own weapon as several short figures pushed out of their hiding burrows. In the flickering illumination, Bel could see that their ambushers looked like short people – if people had sickly, pale green skin that sagged like aged flesh and were covered in a thin layer of ghostly white hairs.
So not really like people at all, except that they walked on two feet and their hands were dextrous enough to hold short stabbing tools made of chipped rock.
“Durak’s spit,” Beth cursed. “Scrattes.”
The one nearest to her opened its mouth in a savage snarl, revealing several rows of sharp, serrated teeth.