Bel pushed her face into a rubble pile, vainly attempting to see any light leaking through. Was the air marginally fresher? Bel took a deep sniff.

Her reward for her diligence was a violent sneeze. After vigorously rubbing her itching nose she turned back to the group and declared, “I think we’re almost there.” The cavern-full of scrattes, gorgons, and a single irritable cuttle-girl stared back.

“You keep saying that, but we’ve been wandering around for days,” Orseis whined.

“I don’t have a map,” Bel snapped. She took a deep, calming breath. “We can only go up for so long before we get out.”

“But I’m hungry,” she moaned. “We haven’t found anything but bugs, and there haven’t been enough of them.”

Manipule patted the grumpy girl on the head.

Bel sighed and gestured to the scrattes. “They don’t complain.”

“The scrattes are shriveling, Bel,” Cress objected. “We really do need to find the way out of here.”

“We’ve got to be close,” Bel insisted. “The delvers probably collapsed this bit of tunnel to block the exit.”

The gorgons eyed the rocks skeptically. Bel couldn’t really blame them – she’d insisted the same thing at the last three rubble piles with nothing to show for it, except for more tunnel. She snorted at her own failings and turned back to the rocks. They were too much to simply toss aside, but once they were liquified they would flow downhill and unclog the tunnel.

Bel got to it, slowly melting the stones away. A minute later, with a hole only a few strides deep into the endless pile of loose rocks, Bel lost her patience. With a cry of frustration she slammed her fist into the stones and blew them apart with a liquid shockwave.

She immediately regretted it. The ringing from the loud sound in the enclosed space made her dizzy and the blowback of rocks and pebbles reminded her that the entire thing could collapse on her head. She backed out of her small passage, coughing and spitting out rocks.

“This sucks,” she admitted. “I don’t–”

Bel stopped talking when a scratte elbowed past her. Then another one practically ran into her on its way into the small space she’d cleared. She turned to see them screeching into the darkness, and then a mass of scrattes slammed into her from behind, sweeping her back up the passage like a bit of driftwood being carried downstream. Her snakes hissed with distaste as the scrattes squeezed around her, screeching and waving their arms like they’d gone even more mad than usual.

Even their leader, the shaman who had a very un-scratte-like demeanor, was shouting and slamming his hands into the blockage. Bel ducked out of the way as the scrattes grabbed onto the rocks and tossed them over their heads, heedless of any other scrattes behind them. Their single-minded fervor made the mob of scrattes work as a single entity, transporting stones out of the way at a pace that made Bel’s efforts pale in comparison. Bel rubbed moisture from her neck as the air grew hot and sweaty from the localized effort.

And then she felt a cool breeze against her skin.

As the scrattes continued pulling the rocks away, Bel saw a single shaft of light breaking into the darkness. Then two, and then a patch wide enough to illuminate the entire horde of scrattes. Their reckless efforts reached a fevered pitch. The moment the hole was large enough the first of them forced their body through it.

Bel blinked in surprise as the entire group crammed themselves through the small opening, forcing it wider as they wriggled through. In just a few moment, Bel was alone in tunnel.

“Is everything okay in there?” Cress called out. “The scrattes are still under control, right?”

“Of course,” Bel replied. As she dusted herself off she saw Cress squeezing into the space, a dagger held in one hand in place of her usual hammer.

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“It’s fine, it’s fine. We found a way out!”

Bel gestured dramatically at the opening.

A smile broke on out Cress’ face, but then she frowned. “Wait, are all the scrattes out there? Unsupervised?”

“Oh crap.”

Bel rushed to the opening, fearful visions of the scrattes eating a human family in the middle of the picnic playing in her head. But when she jumped through the exit and into the sun, she instead found the scrattes, all 150 or so, kneeling on the ground and waving their hands towards the sun.

Cress joined her a moment later, blinking furiously at the sudden light.

“See,” Bel said, “no problems here.”

Cress scoffed, but she sheathed her dagger as she took in the sights. “So where are we?”

Bel looked around. They were in a nondescript bit of forest on the side of a slope. “On the side of a mountain, I guess?”

Cress’ eyebrows went up. “I meant which of your plans are we going to do? Can’t you tell where we are based upon the–”

Cress pointed up to the sky and paused. “Uh, based on the…”

She spun around slowly. “How do you tell where you are? What are those?”

Bel looked up. “Those are moons. You can tell time with them, but that’s it. You just have to know where you are, or figure it out from landmarks.”

“What?” Cress cried, incredulous. “What if you get carried off by a storm?”

Bel shrugged. “Then bad things happen.”

The sound of shifting rocks announced Orseis’ arrival. “We got bored of waiting,” she explained.

She turned around and shouted back into the tunnel. “It’s all great! Come on out!”

Then she looked around with a wide grin. “Has anyone looked for food yet? What’s to eat?”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, those work. Didn’t you say that Satrap doesn’t have any spearheads?”

Bel looked up just in time to see a pair of the flying creatures land heavily at a clear spot on the slope. They quickly began loping towards the vulnerable scrattes, clacking their body-length beaks with anticipation. Bel looked up again and realized what was missing. “The Barrier is gone. I forgot.”

She stepped towards the threat, but the flurry of movement had already broken the spell of stillness that had washed over the scrattes. As one, they turned towards the spearheads and screeched. The startled creatures drew up short, their thin limbs skidding over the ground as they brought themselves to a halt.

And then Orseis leaped upon the closer one’s face, shouting “food” as she wrapped her tentacles around it. At her signal the scrattes charged, quickly overwhelming the stunned beasts.

Bel’s snakes twitched and flicked their tongues with amusement. “Those things are way less scary than I remember,” she said. The last time one of the four-legged fliers had threatened her, she had been forced to escape through the valley of the cat girls. Bel had nearly died. “I suppose having an entire army with me also helps.”

With the flying creatures reduced to dinner, the leader of the scrattes trotted back to Bel, waiving his arms and making horrible noises as he went. She’d been getting better at understanding the not-speech that the scrattes used, but it wasn’t until he began scratching pictures into the dirt that she figured out what he wanted.

She turned to Cress, who was busy organizing the other gorgons. “Hey Cress, can I put your big, fancy wings to use? I need to get a better vantage point so I can figure out where we are, and then I need to find some water for the scrattes.”

“You’re so heavy though,” Cress teased. “You’ve been putting on weight this entire trip. At least take off your armor.”

“Haha,” Bel deadpanned. She manipulated her liquified armor down her body and left it in a lump at her feet. Then she lifted her arms. “Up.”

Cress sighed. Bel wanted to sigh too – she’d been dreaming of getting her own set of magnificent wings, but it seemed like she would need to get a matching set of air manipulation abilities if she wanted to fly well under the full gravity of Olympos. She was still tempted, but her practical worries were taking up more of her thoughts.

Cress leaped into the air and manipulated the wind to fill her wings. She spiraled around a couple of times to gain speed before swooping low to grab Bel under her armpits, hoisting her into the air. Bel had a moment of worry that her plague serpent would take advantage of the situation, but she could feel a barely simmering sense of self-control coming from the snake. She wasn’t sure if that meant the snake was growing less violent, or just more calculating, but at least it had learned to keep a lid on its urges.

As Cress strained to lift her, Bel searched for any familiar landmarks. She quickly saw that her group had emerged onto the side of a modest mountain. It had to be part of Saw Range that ran from the Spine down to Satrap’s eastern side.

If we’re on the north side, then I should see a river…

Bel shouted with satisfaction when she saw the glimmer of light on water. “Ah! That’s it! That’s the Cobalt river! I can even see the bridge! I know where we are!”

“Great,” Cress grunted. “So I can land now?”

Bel nodded enthusiastically. “Yup! And now I know what we’ll be doing next.”

She grinned with anticipation. “We’re going to invade Baytown.”

“Who’s that?”

Bel remembered how she had been stabbed in the back of Technis’ temple and chased through the woods.

“Technis has a garrison there.”

She looked over her large group of scrattes. “They deserve what we’re bringing.”