Bel slammed her fist into another goose-woman, a liquid shockwave messily separating the monster’s head from the gray and white feathered body that Bel had impaled upon her spear. The woman’s dark eyes stared at Bel with malevolence even as the life drained out of them, and Bel suppressed a shudder. She felt no remorse; the dark-haired women were malice incarnate.

Bel’s group of scrattes and gorgons had found the flock of fowl women in the middle of a shallow pond that filled the floor of a vast room. She had attempted to broker a peaceful passage across the lake, but the women had responded with immediate bloodlust. In that first encounter, Bel’s group had retreated from the ferocity of the flock’s attack. Their front line of scrattes had been reduced to a green sludge by powerful shrieks and honks, and they had only escaped further losses because the territorial flock of half-goose women decided to stop and dine upon the scrattes’ flesh rather than pursue. Even Orseis had been repulsed by their messy eating.

They needed to cross the room to continue their ascent, so a second battle was unavoidable. For their second attack, Cress organized a small group of gorgons, with Orseis and a few scrattes forming a wall of spears to keep the flock at bay. Cress used her ability to solidify the air around them, suppressing the flock’s main method of attack, firmly shifting the odds to their favor. Bel had mistakenly thought that the women would let their group past once they realized that their powerful voices had been negated, but it only seemed to drive them into a mindless fury. So now Bel was stabbing and punching the half-women to death.

Orseis made a noise of disgust. “This is taking forever, and those human heads at the ends of their long necks are going to give me nightmares. Why don’t you turn into magma Bel and hit them with some fireballs?”

Bel shook her head and then jabbed her spear at a low-flying goose-woman. The baleful creature twisted in midair to avoid Bel’s attack and uncoiled her neck to snap at Orseis with a mouth full of serrated teeth. Cress leaped into the air and swung her hammer, knocking the goose into the shallow water where another gorgon quickly froze her in place. Orseis finished her off with a quick jab of her divine spear.

That gave them a moment of respite as the rest of the flock retreated to circle above them. “Too much water for Sparky,” Bel answered after catching her breath. She had to shout to be heard through Cress’ sound suppression, and her voice only came out as a whisper. “And there’s no soil for Flora to burrow her roots. She wouldn’t like it.”

Orseis glanced at the plague serpent, who was wriggling energetically around Bel’s neck. “What about the new one?”

Bel could practically hear the dangerous serpent whispering into her thoughts. Choose me!

“You know my snakes affect my state of mind. My plague snake is too risky.”

Merge with me and I will destroy our enemies!

Bel ignored the untrustworthy spirit’s intrusive thoughts.

“She stopped trying to bite you, didn’t she?”

Bel snorted. “Only after she met Lempo.”

At the goddess’ name, the plague serpent muted her overeager killing thoughts, but Bel could still feel her tongue flicking eagerly.

At least she has some self-preservation instincts, Bel thought, even if her self-control is lacking.

Bel watched Orseis throw her spear into the circling flock and was reminded that her serpent wasn’t the only one with poor self-control. At Orseis’ distance, the flying women anticipated the trajectory of her attack and batted the spear aside with powerful blasts of air. They cackled and honked with glee before descending for another attack.

“Wait until you see the darks of their eyes,” Cress scolded. The experienced warrior glared at the geese, hoping to petrify one of them before they reached melee range.

Bel tightened her grip on her weapon and stared into the eyes of the geese-women. They were sentient, but they couldn’t resist staring at Bel’s group with expressions of hate and hunger. It made them easy targets for the gorgon’s gaze abilities, and if there weren’t so damn many of them the fight would have already been over. A trio of petrified or paralyzed women plunged into the water before the flock came close enough to snap at Bel’s group with their teeth, and the cycle began again.

It took two more passes of the angry flock before the bird-women finally decided to yield the small body of water to the gorgons and scrattes. They screeched indignantly and defecated overhead before spiraling higher and exiting the Pillar through a small hole a hundred strides above the floor. Bel stared unhappily at the turds they left floating in the water. The scrattes were completely unbothered by the filth and rushed to the nearest body. They began plucking its feathers with glee.

Cress nodded with satisfaction. “I will tell the rest of the group that it is safe. We should pass through here quickly before these foul creatures return.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The rest of the gorgons nodded in agreement, and Cress flapped her wings to fly over the polluted water, sending a spray of water over the rest of the group.

Orseis desperately wiped at her body with her tentacles.

“Those bird women are the worst,” Orseis moaned.

“Worse than that annoying garuda?” Bel asked.

“Yeah.”

“How about reanimated Crystal?”

Orseis shrugged. “You’re the one who had to fight her, so…”

“Nebamon?”

“Oh, yeah, I hate that guy. So glad he’s dead.” The cuttle-girl’s eyes widened. “You don’t think Technis would revive him too, do you?”

“I…”

Bel grimaced.

“Well, Technis can do just about anything, so I guess he could if he wanted to.”

Bel tilted her head towards the bodies and the ever-widening circle of feathers and gore. “C’mon, we’d better grab some essence before the scrattes pluck all of the bodies and turn them into planters.”

Orseis hurried after Bel, distrustfully prodding the bodies with the tips of her tentacles to extract their essence. After pulling the essence from three of them, Bel spent a few moments poking around at the core’s abilities before emptying its essence.

“That was another threshold,” Bel announced.

“Wow, you sound so excited. I guess all this power is boring, huh?”

Bel rolled her eyes at Orseis’ sarcasm. She turned to say something snide to her companion, but laughed when she saw Manipule coming to join them. The clever gorgon was freezing the water beneath her to avoid walking through a slurry of filth.

“Are you both safe?” Manipule asked as she skated over to them. She gave them a once-over, clearly unwilling to trust their self-evaluations. “You are both filthy,” she complained with a wrinkled nose.

Bel quickly stepped onto Manipule icy path, glad to get out of the disgusting water. Her lips curled with disgust as she watched brown water drip from her clothing. “This is typical for us, right?” Bel glumly replied.

Manipule’s snakes flicked their tongues with dissatisfaction. “You have been very negative since this morning. It is not good.”

“Yeah,” Orseis piled on, “you’ve been extra grumpy. What’s bothering you now? Are you still mad that James isn’t calling?”

Bel quickly brushed her hand against her silent earring before shaking off their concerns with a wave of her hand. “Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine.”

“Then why are you complaining about advancing your core?” Orseis asked.

“I’m not complaining,” Bel scowled.

“Well, you’re not excited.”

Bel make a rude noise with her lips, but Manipule clapped a hand over her mouth to interrupt.

“Don’t teach the child strange habits,” she scolded. “Now act like an adult gorgon and tell us what is wrong.”

Bel flushed with embarrassment. Manipule was right, she was acting like Orseis.

“Sorry. It’s just that I don’t think growing a few more thresholds is going to matter against Technis.”

Bel sighed. “Clark was out-planning us in the underworld, and his body wasn’t even there. And he’s not even a fraction of Technis’ age and craftiness! It’s not like I’m going to get any smarter or wiser before I have to fight him.”

Manipule smiled. “That is why you talk to others about your problems, Bel. When many gorgons put our heads together we are smarter than when we are alone, right? So what are you really worried about?”

Bel hesitated, feeling that speaking all of her worries would be like shoving her problems at someone else. Then she realized that Orseis and Manipule, and all of the gorgons and scrattes, were already mixed up in her problems.

I’m being silly.

Bel pointed at the wooden box of books that Manipule carried for her. “I finished volume two and started on volume three. They’re getting scary.”

Manipule tilted her head. “How?”

“Technis and Durak worked together, apparently,” Bel explained. “Durak is the god of retribution that my sister, Beth, follows. He ascended, but Technis suppressed his powers somehow, staying behind.”

Orseis shrugged her tentacles. “So what? We already knew that he was near godhood anyway. So was the Dark Ravager, and Kjar cooked him like a quick snack.”

Bel shook her head. “Durak and Technis started working together when some elf conquered the continent and destroyed the third dynasty. They didn’t just survive, they actively fought against the newcomers for hundreds of years. Technis eventually betrayed Durak because he was an asshole even before making Satrap, but he still has hundreds of years of experience fighting as an insurgent struggling against a stronger force.”

Bel’s snakes wriggled unhappily with her agitation. “When the elf ascended, he took the eastern side of the land back from the fourth dynasty. Then he put up his Barrier and disrupted their weather and used strategic attacks to destabilize the entire country. The people of the Golden Plains are all that was left after he was done with them.”

“So he’s a bad guy,” Orseis said.

Bel threw up her hands when she saw that Orseis and Manipule weren’t getting the problem. “We’re not going to outsmart or surprise him. He’s been fighting wars for more than a century. This is just the same old stuff for him.”

Manipule smiled again. “Then we must do something that he would never expect.”

Bel quirked an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

“Working together with others,” she replied slyly. “Would he not have overthrown the fourth dynasty more quickly if he had not betrayed Durak?”

Bel tilted her head, thinking about it. “I guess so.”

Manipule nodded. “In the Free City, I worked with a manager like that. He was very smart, always knew best, always stood behind you and controlled every step you took. Always left a disaster when he walked away.”

Bel shook her head. “Satrap wasn’t a disaster though.”

“You visited the Free City, and so did Technis. But you have told us that Satrap was full of disease and waste filled the streets. How did Satrap compare to the Free City?”

Bel opened her mouth and paused. “Well, I guess Satrap was primitive in comparison. He did bring in some weapons from the Old World, but he didn’t do anything to improve the cities. I don’t think that bothered Technis, though, it isn’t like he was living there.”

Manipule nodded. “Technis is so big and smart and knows best but he cannot even copy better cities that he has seen. With less disease he would have ten times more followers, but cannot be bothered to help? I am not impressed.”

Bel chuckled at the thought of Manipule scolding a demigod. “James would call that micro-managing. It means messing around with small things and forgetting big, important things.”

She took a deep breath. “I guess you’re right, Manipule. If he doesn’t trust anyone else then he’s wasting time looking over shoulders and controlling everything. And I can’t imagine lots of people tell him that he’s wrong about something. We just have to figure out how to exploit that.”