“I think we’re close to the surface,” Bel declared. “The layer after all of the lava stuff is smaller than the rest. We’ll just have to climb through some caverns to get out.”
She tilted her head as she remembered her escape from Satrap. “Maybe we’ll have to tunnel through some rock too, if there aren’t any open tunnels to the surface.”
Bel had meant to say something to raise their spirits, but the other gorgons groaned. They rubbed at aching legs and stiff shoulders and passed around a flask of their dangerously strong drinks.
Bel leaned close to Cress and whispered, “leading seems tough.”
Cross chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, well, the stronger gravity is getting us down. We’ll get used to it soon.”
She glanced at the army of scrattes that surrounded them. “Other things we may never get used to.”
The number of scrattes following them had grown. Every time they encountered another group of the saggy-fleshed green people, Lempo’s shaman would challenge their leaders to a fight. After winning and, Bel assumed, showing the superiority of his path, the shaman would merge the new group with his current followers. The scrattes didn’t quite have a language, as far as Bel could understand, so Bel didn’t know if the rest of the scrattes knew what they were doing or where they were going, but they all fell in line behind the shaman and didn’t give the gorgons any trouble.
That was all “normal,” at least from the gorgons’ perspectives. It was their method of reproduction that Bel’s fellow gorgons had trouble accepting. Seeds were planted in corpses and replanted in larger corpses, eventually leading to full-grown bodies buried up to their shoulders in dead flesh.
And then they withered and sickened. Their roots grew a thick hair over their bodies, as though they were searching for more liquid. Their muscles withered, making their skin loose and baggy. Finally, their parents plucked them and they wailed in agony. The process was still ongoing, and at least once a minute another one would add its screaming voice to the chorus of misery that echoed through the chamber.
Bel popped to her feet. “I think I’ll go for a walk,” she declared.
“Please, yes,” Orseis joined in. “All this noise makes me feel as if a pod of dolphins has me cornered in a crevice.”
As Manipule rose to her feet as well, several of the gorgons frowned. They glanced disapprovingly between Manipule and Escalope. The armored gorgon stood tirelessly nearby, but she wouldn’t leave Fortuit’s side. The other gorgons clearly thought that Manipule shouldn’t be taking her egg away from the powerful protector’s reach.
Cress sighed and stood up. “I’ll come too.”
The other gorgons hesitated, but they shrugged and went back to drinking.
Bel shook her head and grabbed one of the small, glowing orbs that they had taken from an unlucky group of dhvaras and walked towards the unexplored path upwards. She waited to say anything until they marched out of the room and into a small, spiralling ramp that would continue their way to the surface. “The other gorgons are being jerks, Cress.”
Crecerelle rubbed at her temples as if she was trying to find a way to release the pressure building up inside. A few of her snakes rattled with pent up frustration.
“They are jerks,” Manipule piled on. “Just because I am carrying an egg, they have all decided that I can no longer think for myself.”
Cress squeezed her head and groaned. “Look, I’m trying, okay? But I can’t make them change their habits at the flick of a tongue. I used to try to want everyone to change instantly, but that didn’t work very well. Everyone’s still worried about getting killed and eaten and the scrattes are freaking them out.”
Bel gave her a consoling pat on the shoulder. “James told me a few stories about the Old World. People often give up things they like if someone promises them safety.”
Orseis snorted. “Sounds like a wimpy way of thinking.”
Bel shook her head. “James would always say that things aren’t black and white.”
The group was silent for a moment as they considered Bel’s words. I must sound pretty smart, she thought to herself.
“How can things be black and white?” Cress finally asked. “Like, obviously I turn black and white at the same time, but what does that mean?”
“Uh…” Bel hesitated.
“Like night and day, maybe?” Manipule guessed.
Orseis rolled her eyes. “It’s another one of her stupid sayings from the Old World. It’s probably referring to football or pizza or the Internet.”
Bel grimaced. “Never mind the Old World expression, let’s talk about the scrattes instead. I wonder what they’ll look like if their young grow properly on the surface?”
“Slightly less ugly?” Orseis guessed.
“I worry more about the fighting than their reproduction up there,” Cress said. “The scrattes are surprisingly good at following simple directions, but they fall back to swarm tactics when they’re surprised. If Technis’ forces are organized we may have problems.”
Orseis flexed her tentacles. “Bel says that they’re weak. We’ll roll right through ’em.”
Bel bopped her on the head. “I said that their cores were probably weaker than what you would expect. Technis’ inquisitors are strong though, and his people have guns and other technology. They aren’t used to fighting gorgons or scrattes though.”
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She tried to remember Beth’s lessons. “We’ll want to strike quickly once we reach the surface. Technis dropped his Barrier so he could launch a surprise attack upon the Golden Plains, but that means his armies are fighting the Alliance and the Golden Plains at the same time. The cities behind the front lines should be open to attack.”
Bel slammed a fist into her open hand, making a satisfyingly loud sound. “If we could take out the forges at Hammerstrike or sink the fishing boats at Baytown we could cripple their war effort. There are only a food good routes through Satrap as well, so destroying one of the canals is also an option. Then we retreat to a local town, seize it from his forces, and dig in for a long siege.”
Cress blinked at her, clearly surprised. “You kept saying that you didn’t have a plan. I thought we were going to meet up with your mother’s priests.”
“I still want to do that too, and I don’t really have a plan,” Bel complained. “That’s just stuff I picked up from Beth. I don’t know where we’re going to be when we get out of here, so I don’t know if we’ll be able to pull any of that off.”
“This is typical Bel behavior,” Orseis said with a wave of her tentacles. “Whine and complain about stuff, and then pull something crazy out of her–”
Manipule poked the small girl in the side with a finger coated in ice, cutting her off before she could utter an unapproved word. Orseis shrieked indignantly and wrapped her body in tentacles. “So cold! That isn’t even a bad word!”
“It’s bad enough,” Manipule scolded. “And I need to make up for all the time you have spent without good supervision.”
Bel cringed. Manipule had never confronted her about it, but she could only assume that the other gorgon held Bel partially responsible for Orseis’ bad manners. She was thankfully saved from defending herself when Cress stepped forward and hefted her hammer.
“Wait. There is something ahead.” Cress’ snakes rattled as she peered into the darkness.
Bel looked up the tunnel and saw that it stopped climbing in a few strides before widening into a larger space. Although Bel couldn’t see the full extent of the area, she could tell from Kjar’s sight that the ceiling was crowded with something small and evil.
“We should return and get the others,” Cress said.
“Let’s not,” Bel replied. “The swarm reminds me of Clark’s birds. One of Technis’ inquisitors could be using them to alert them of our arrival.”
“So you want to go around them?”
Bel shook her head. “No. I’ll take care of them myself. That way, the inquisitors won’t know how large a group we’ve put together.”
She grinned. “Or maybe they’ll think I’m alone.”
Cress and Manipule frowned, but Orseis waved cheerfully.
“If they look delicious, bring some back for me,” the cuttle-girl demanded.
Bel tossed their light source to the cuttle-girl and pulled her spear from her back. Then she took off her nice clothes, dropped her bag, and liquified her armor and manipulated the metal into a thin layer of protection that covered most of her body. Then she took the small light back and formed a holder for it with the metal on her shoulder so she could keep both hands free.
“They’ll probably be something gross, Ori, but I’ll bring you anything that looks good,” she promised.
She strode resolutely into the larger chamber and took a moment to examine the creatures and whatever else waited for her. Her light did little to illuminate the wider area, but she could see that the tunnel extended at least a hundred strides in either direction. The floor was filled with loose dirt – or probably guano, she realized.
That would explain the smell.
The ceiling was high enough to be shrouded in near darkness, but she could still detect the creatures through Kjar’s abilities. She didn’t have to wait long for the creatures to react to her presence. They dropped from the ceiling like synchronized dancers, and from the squeaks and the rustling of their leathery wings Bel identified them as bats.
The long, scorpion-like tails that trailed behind them were distinctly not bat-like however.
I guess Technis isn’t distracted enough to leave these caves unwatched. I wonder if there are any of the original bats left, or if he used them all up to create these things?
Bel tensed for a fight and tracked all of the tiny hearts swirling above her. The first time she’d been attacked by a swarm of stitched-together creatures she had cowered under Nebamon and Rikja as her captors fought them off. She had come a long way since then.
I’m not afraid of you punks, she thought, I’m a kick-ass gorgon with magical powers!
The bats descended like a crashing wave, hundreds of them filling the space above her. Bel reached out to their cores and mercilessly killed them all with liberate essence. Bodies fell like rain around her, some bouncing from her armored back.
Bel caught one as it fell past and examined the creature. The tail was stitched on, as she’d suspected, and the bat sported a jaw three sizes too large for its head. A strip of quills lined its back, extracted from a third creature and grafted on. Bel dropped the body with disgust.
The stuff Technis makes is way worse than any strange things my mother’s done. I don’t understand why someone didn’t stick a knife in this guy’s back before he got so powerful.
A second swarm of the stitched-together bats flew in from another part of the tunnels and converged over Bel’s head. They circled once and then descended, and Bel ripped the essence from their cores just as she’d done with the first group.
I guess it’s good that no one is paying attention. If someone intelligent were directing these things, they wouldn’t so easy to kill.
As the sounds of falling bodies faded, Bel heard a shuffling noise. She turned to face the new threat and saw a small herd of a few dozen downy, sailbacked lizards. They were the same creatures who had blocked her retreat when Nebamon’s group had lead her into an ambush set by one of Technis’ enforcers. Their bodies were covered in spines and claws and extra heads, but Bel thought that their numbers were more threatening than their abilities.
She liquified her armor, pulling the metal over her head and sealing herself inside, leaving some holes for breathing. She kept the joints liquid as she advanced, and used her sense of their hearts to stab her spear through the first of them. As she retracted the spear and jabbed it into the second body, she was jostled to the side when one of them clamped its jaws around her leg.
She swung the butt of her spear to knock it away and blindly scrambled back a few steps, tripping and fumbling over the mountain of corpses she’d left behind. How can Escalope see anything with all of her armor? Actually, how could she see anything when her head got cut off?
Bel kicked another lizard away and broke free of the throng.
Even if her armor was stronger than the lizard’s bite, she realized that they could still knock her over and smother her. It didn’t sound like a good way to die, so she kept her distance as she speared the slow-moving lizards one by one. As she finished off the last of them, she became aware of a jolting that moved through the floor and up her legs. She moved the metal from her helmet down so she could see again, but the cause of the shaking wasn’t clear.
“Hey, Bel,” Cress called out from the entrance to the tunnel, “how are things going up here?” She looked around at the corpses that now filled the floor. “We thought someone was making explosions.”
Bel shrugged. “I think it’s just something big.”
She waved the other gorgon back. “I’ve got this, you go watch Orseis and Manipule.”
Cress opened her mouth, shrugged, and went back down the passageway.
Bel rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck as she waited for whatever planned to challenge her next.