Bel hesitated as she watched for the plague-bringer’s next move. Bel’s opponent had abandoned her rats and disease-based attacks in a fit of rage, and had taken control of all of the water in the room instead. The woman was still visible at the top of her pillar of swirling water, and if her gaze could kill then Bel would have been eviscerated. Bel hoped that her control of water was as clumsy as she looked, but she assumed the opposite would probably be true.
The lizard woman’s first move wasn’t to attack Bel, however. Instead, dark tendrils shot from her swirling vortex and pierced the bodies of the nearest fish. The helpless creatures had been flopping pathetically in a few tiny puddles, but when the dark tendrils pierced their bodies they went stiff. Their scales darkened and stood on end before splitting until they branched into small, hairlike threads. Some of their fins swelled and distended before flattening into small feet, and their jaws elongated horrifically as they filled with teeth like needles. The body changes were accompanied by horrible sounds of flesh and bone twisting and stretching. After the agonizing transformation, a new rat stared at Bel with its hateful, pain-filled eyes.
Bel’s nose itched as the abrasive aroma of crimes against nature filled the air. She couldn’t keep a growl from emerging low in her throat. “What the hell is your problem,” Bel cursed at the rat-summoning woman.
The lizard laughed, a deep, sickly gurgle. “The Plague is endless! The Plague is unbeatable!”
Bel shook her head. “I’ll just kill those ones too, you know.”
“Never!” the woman howled. The surface of her pillar wriggled, and then a disc of water flew out of the center in Bel’s direction.
Bel planted her feet and agilely leaped over it. She turned slightly to watch the disc as it sliced into the wall behind her, sending rocks flying in every direction. The water had taken a deep bite out of the rocks, all the way down to the indestructible material of the Pillar itself.
Her snakes recoiled in alarm and Bel quickly turned her attention back to the water-wielder. The pillar wriggled again, and this time three discs shot towards Bel. She leaped upwards and flattened her body. Her lips compressed in a grimace as she passed between two of the deadly discs, just a handspan away from being chopped to pieces.
The moment she landed, she repeated the maneuver to dodge the next attack. Then the discs came out with different angles, and Bel leaped and dove to pass through increasingly narrow safe spots between the attacks. After a particularly impressive spinning jump, Bel landed, neatly scooped up a hunk of rubble, destabilized it, and threw it at the woman in one neat motion.
As she dodged the next set of spinning discs, she watched with anticipation as her counterattack neared it destination. Before it reached the plague-bringer, a tendril of water flicked it away. The rock exploded, destroying the watery limb but not coming close to harming the woman.
Crows eat her entrails, she’s barely losing any water like this. I’m going to pass out before she runs out.
Bel grit her teeth and charged over the rippled surface of the dried pond. Now, instead of jumping between cutting discs, Bel sped up, slowed down, and swerved from side to side to avoid them. She cleared a hundred strides and had twenty more to go to reach the lizard when the cerulean woman’s scaled skin flushed a deep, angry red.
Her water pillar flexed, and a wide tentacle of water emerged. Bel leaped over the liquid appendage as it smashed the ground beneath her feet, but a second appendage swung behind it, slamming Bel to the ground. The two tentacles beat the ground like a drum, pounding away with rock-shattering force as Bel desperately rolled, leaped, and dodged away from them.
Leap by leap, the ferocity of the attacks forced her back, and in just a few moments she had given back all of the ground that she’d gained.
The tentacles became tenuous as they stretched to their limits, and finally broke apart with one more titanic crash against the wall. Bel glanced at the destruction they’d wrought, and saw that the lizard woman’s attacks had broken through most of the freshly formed rocks in the room, leaving behind a field of loose rubble and the bare walls of the Pillar. The draining crack where the water had previous emptied was revealed to be another pipe that emptied to a lower room in the maze.
Bel shifted her attention back to the lizard. The pillar of water rippled, but Bel couldn’t tell what it was doing. She heard a high-pitched buzz though, so she quickly dodged to the side.
Her quick movement saved her life – a small stone behind her shattered from the force of the small bullet of water that slammed into it. Bel grimaced as she looked into the crazed smirk of her attacker.
When is she going to run out of energy? Bel wondered helplessly.
The water rippled and a barrage of water bullets followed.
Bel dodged as best as she could, moving frantically from one location to the next as she kept her head tucked low and used Kjar’s armor to absorb as many hits as she could. Her liquid body let some of the bullets pass through her, but each one sent painful shockwave through her body before pulling out small chunks of her as they exited. After a minute, Bel’s breathing was ragged and her limbs trembled from exertion. She was soaked with sweat that mixed with blood as it dripped down her body. Bel leaped behind another large chunk of rock for cover and waited for it to be blown to pieces.
Instead, the lizard woman paused her assault. Bel peaked behind her cover and saw that the lizard woman had paused with her arms open wide. Her pillar had dwindled to less than half of its original volume, so she had stopped her attack to refill it. Bel wondered if this was her chance to attack.
Then the water that coated the rocks and lay in large pools trembled and flowed back to her, rushing to rejoin the rest of the water under the plague-bringer’s control.
Bel examined the woman’s expression and breathing and was dismayed to see no signs of fatigue in the lizard woman’s stance or behavior.
I’m losing, Bel recognized. And it’s not even close.
She tensed, preparing to use Sparky to activate her Belemental form, but hesitated. Magma Bel against a wall of water? I don’t think that’s a winner.
She could turn into a tree too, but her immobility would just make her an easier target.
Bel bit down on her pride and turned to run. She dashed from behind her cover and made for the drainage pipe with a powerful pounce.
The moment the woman realized Bel’s intention to flee, she shrieked like a bird whose nest was raided. Bel felt the air in the chamber shift as a large mass of water moved. When she landed, she planted her feet to the ground and turned to face a wave of water that threatened to crush her against the walls. Just before it struck, she pivoted and thrust her good arm forward, dispersing the force of the water with a powerful shockwave. The mass of it broke around her, pooling around her legs in a chaotic swirl rather than sweeping her from her feet.
Bel didn’t pause to see how her opponent would react, instead taking a deep breath before she dove directly into the flooded drainage pipe. As her shoulders rubbed against it, Bel realized that it was slightly too small for her body. That was good though – the lizard woman wouldn’t be able to follow.
Bel used her liquid body to squeeze herself through the tight passage. The current was fast enough that she didn’t need to bother kicking, but she had to squeeze herself around several tight curves. When the pipe divided, Bel was forced to ditch her newly obtained sword, but with some extra applications of liquid body, and the buildup of water pressure behind her, Bel was able to squeeze herself through the larger of the two branches. The increasing feeling of breathless claustrophobia was beginning to make Bel’s body itch when she finally popped into an open space and fell into a small, peaceful pond.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Bel felt the sand beneath her hands as she gasped for breath, and looked up to see that she had emerged back in her starting room.
“Well,” she coughed, “I’m alive and two of them are gone, so I guess I’m winning.”
She pushed herself out of the water and leaned against the nearest wall as she continued sucking in lung fulls of sweet, life-restoring air. A quick self-inspection showed that her body was a mess, with cuts, punctures, and bruises forming just about everywhere. Even her snakes were bedraggled and lethargic, especially Sparky, who’s magmatic nature didn’t agree with being soaked. Bel’s new snake wriggled into her field of view and flicked her tongue excitedly at Bel’s impending demise.
“Oh, hush,” Bel scolded it. “Ask the other snakes, this is normal. It’s fine.”
The vivid green snake opened its mouth to reveal two glistening fangs, but Sparky and Flora twined around it before it could bite. “Thanks guys,” Bel said as she watched her two loyal serpents weigh the new one down in a heavy braid.
She looked up and examined the room. Other than the pipes, there was only one exit, and the ceiling was a solid, glowing slab of the Pillar’s metal. Bel couldn’t imagine the bulky lizard fitting through the pipe, which meant that she knew where the lizard would enter.
Bel didn’t doubt that the woman would find her quickly with her rats doing the searching. At the rate that she produced new ones from the maze’s unfortunate creatures, it was a wonder that the entire place wasn’t already swarming with them. Bel shuddered at the memory of the fish’s flesh warping into another unnatural rat. I’m lucky that I have an ability to deal with swarms of weak creatures, she thought.
Actually, it’s lucky that I’m resistant to her plague abilities, too.
Bel tilted her head and pondered the matchup. If it hadn’t been for all the water, would the lizard woman have seemed so dangerous? Probably not – which meant that the woman had chosen that room ahead of time, expecting to fall back upon her water powers.
Bel clicked her tongue. She’d been outmaneuvered once again.
“I really need to improve at this ambushing thing,” she sighed to her snakes. And here she was, sitting around in another room that was filled with water, her body badly beaten and her cores nearly empty, waiting for the woman to show up and finish the job. Flora’s tree form could help her recover her essence, but she would still need to win in a fight.
Bel looked around the room again. It did have water, but much less than the room with the large pond. It was also a far smaller room, perhaps twenty strides across. That would make it easier for Bel to grapple with the lizard woman.
She spun around slowly, thinking of how she would fight in the space. Bel nodded to herself. “Yeah, I can work with this.”
----------------------------------------
The rats came first, sniffing around the entrance to the room but not entering. Bel waited patiently until the lizard-woman burst into the room.
Bel guessed that her opponent meant to arrive with sudden force and take her by surprise. Bel was waiting in her tree form, though, and as a tree she seemed to have boundless patience.
The moment that the lizard entered the room, roaring about the beauty of pestilence, Bel slammed her roots over the entrance, trapping them both inside. The rest of the room had been filled with roots, and she whipped them up and down in an attempt to knock the hasty woman to the ground.
As expected, the lizard lifted her arms and pulled the water in the room to her body, lifting her over Bel’s roots and away from the unsteady footing. Her momentary immobility made her an easy target for a trio of rocks that Bel destabilized with her rooty appendages, though.
Bel had spent much of her time in the room practicing her aim. It wasn’t perfect – throwing through her roots was still awkward – but the rocks all exploded near to her intended target. The water covering the woman was vaporized, and the lizard roared in pain and surprise as a wave of heat threw her back down to the ground where Bel’s roots were waiting to entangle her.
Bel squeezed with all of her planty might, but rather than a triumphant yielding of flesh and bone she felt a sudden blast of pain as the water-wielding woman chopped through her root with several discs of water.
The lizard pulled water to her fists as she prepared another wave of attacks, but Bel struck first, jabbing another root into the woman’s right knee and delivering a painful liquid shockwave.
The woman’s leg gave out and she fell onto her hands. From all fours her sinuous neck became more apparent and her serpentine nature asserted itself. She craned her head in Bel’s direction and hissed angrily as she pulled more water into a defensive shell that covered her body.
Then the water shook, and the room was pelted in a hail of water bullets. Bel moved the thick bark of her arms to shield her face, and Kjar’s armor absorbed the blows to her body, but her hastily formed root system was blasted to a pulp. As the attack trailed off, Bel moved her branched to the side so she could see her attacker. The plague-bringer stared back with a look of crazed triumph.
So Bel whipped one of her long arms forward and smashed the woman in the face. As a tree, Bel lost many of her regular, gorgon attributes – her snakes became thick vines, her feet became roots that dug into the ground, her arms became branches several strides long, and her thick bark made moving more difficult. She still had access to liquid body though, and her new muscle intensifier still worked. She also still had her brazen nails, which showed up as a series of evenly spaced metal thorns at the ends of her long branches.
She wasn’t strong enough to pierce the lizard’s tough skin, but her thorns caught onto the thick armored plates that covered the woman’s back. Bel used her leverage to yank the woman towards her, like an angler dragging a stubborn fish over the sandy ground.
She’ll outlast me if I give her the chance, Bel thought, so I need to end things quickly.
The woman thrashed and struggled, but her powerful shoulders didn’t allow enough range of motion for her to reach around to the branch that had snagged her backside. Sand piled up around her ankles as she was dragged inexorably towards Bel. The woman gave up on her futile grasping and faced Bel instead. Her mouth opened wide, and she exhaled a thick, dark cloud.
Bel wasn’t worried about any toxins in the air, but the woman’s struggling form was hidden behind the dense cover. Bel’s instincts told her that the woman wouldn’t do something pointless, so Bel tossed the woman with a sudden downward jerk of her arm, hoping to disrupt whatever attack she had planned.
As the woman was pulled off-balance by the sudden shift in force and rolled to the side, she launched several arcs of water in Bel’s direction. The motion had disoriented her so most of the attacks went wide, but Bel felt one of them bite into her leg just below her armored skirt. Bel had never been cut so deeply in her tree form before, so her eye widened in surprise when a downward glance revealed a large mass of sap oozing from the cut.
She reacted quickly: first, she followed Beth’s advice to always stay on the offensive by hurling her final destabilized rock towards the lizard woman. While the stone was still on its way, Bel ended her transformation so she could gain more control over her body. As her form reverted to its usual state, leaves and barks falling from her body, Bel channeled more energy through liquid body and squeezed the gaping cut in her leg together.
Just then her destabilized missile exploded. The lizard woman, who had found her feet, was thrown back into the rocky wall. She tottered on all fours, momentarily stunned and disoriented from the sudden blow to the head.
Bel’s blood coagulation abilities helped to stitch her own wound together, an effect which Bel immediately undid when she pounced upon the disabled lizard woman. Bel landed a powerful blow of her fist to the lizard-woman’s thick skull, rocketing her backwards with a liquid shockwave.
Bel’s injured leg gave out and she staggered into the lizard’s wobbling form. The two of them staggered into one another’s arms, like two boxers who had run out of strength and hand to cling to one another to remain upright. The lizard woman recovered first and firmly planted one of her clawed feet in the sand. She gripped her right claws around Bel’s lower left arm, jerked Bel’s arm to the side, and clamped her left claws around Bel’s throat. With her new leverage, the plague-bringer throttled Bel as she pushed her backwards.
Bel struggled to remain upright as her spine was bent backwards, but she managed to drop her right arm to her waist and find her stolen dagger before she was thrown to the sand. Before she could be thrown and choked under the larger woman’s bulk, Bel smoothly jerked the dagger free from its sheath and stabbed it into the lizard’s stomach.
Both of their eyes widened in surprise as the dagger easily slid through the woman’s tough scales.
The plague-bringer stumbled to the side to evade the full length of the blade, but as she placed more weight upon her injured leg she stumbled and fell into the sand. Bel fell on her knees next to the opponent, and didn’t hesitate to squeeze her hands together to deliver a hammer blow to the hilt of the dagger, driving it deeper through the woman’s vitals.
The woman opened her mouth in a pained yowl, but then clamped her jaws around Bel’s left arm, tearing through her skin. Bel slammed her right fist into the woman’s throat, hitting her with another liquid shockwave.
As the plague-bringer choked and gasped for breath, Bel reached down and pulled on her dagger. With a wet squelch it pulled free, loosing a spurt of dark blood. Bel slammed the excelled weapon up through her opponents ribs, finally finding something vital enough to end her struggles.
Bel ripped the woman’s essence from her body, feeling a sudden exaltation at her painful victory.
“Finally,” she huffed, rubbing her sore throat. She examined the pristine blade of the dagger as she pulled it free from her dead opponent. “This is a damn good dagger.”
As she admired the blade, her new snake leaned around and bit her in the arm.