Bel did not appreciate the looks of incredulity she received from the other gorgons when she announced her plan to single-handedly invade Baytown. No one even commented on her ingenious idea of going in through their water supply. In fact, when she mentioned that part their looks got even worse. The only person who seemed to think Bel’s plan was good was Orseis.
“Finally! I’ve been dying to see what that new snake can do!” Orseis curled her tentacles with excitement. “And Vex! I’m shocked that you managed to come up with a decent name for one of them!”
Bel wondered if the support of her tentacled companion was a bad omen, but her plague snake hissed with eager agreement. She could practically taste the spirit snake’s anticipation as its tongue flicked out excitedly.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Bel?” Cress asked.
“I am also concerned,” Manipule added. “Is that serpent trustworthy?”
Vex flicked her tongue with derision.
“I’m sure she’ll be… well, I know that our goals align. My core’s been growing, but I don’t have enough essence to mix our forms forever, so it isn’t like I can get stuck in our mixed form.”
Bel could see that she wasn’t convincing anyone, so she held up her hands to forestall any more disagreement. “Look, I’ve got to give it a try. You just need to watch for chaos on the walls. That’ll be the signal to attack.”
Cress’ pinched brows made it clear she still looked like she wanted to object, but Orseis spoke over her with an abundance of enthusiasm. “You got it! I’ll rip Technis’ soldiers to shreds!”
Bel looked at Escalope. “Will you look after Manipule?”
“Of course,” the armored gorgon nodded back. She quickly put a restraining hand on Manipule’s shoulder, pulling her a little slower to Fortuit. “This is about keeping the egg safe, Manipule, nothing else,” the stern gorgon said.
Manipule looked down at the large clay egg that was her responsibility and gave in with a sigh. “Be safe, Bel. Run away if Vex does not live up to whatever she thinks she can do.”
Vex hissed in reply. Manipule’s snakes hissed back, and a few of the snakes on Cress’ shoulders rattled their tails.
“She’s pretty confident,” Bel replied with a grin. “But I’ll be careful.”
Bel pointed to Orseis. “Orseis, stick with the scratte shaman or the gorgons. You have a bad habit of going off on your own, so I want you staying with someone who has a cooler head.”
The cuttle-girl flashed a mottled pattern of furious crimson across her skin. “You think the scratte has a cooler head than me?”
Bel nodded. “Yup. Someone watch my stuff while I’m gone.”
She dropped her bag and her spear, and then undid her belt to remove her dagger. Then she took off her precious, damageable clothing, spreading her armor to cover her body as she disrobed.
“You should be more modest,” Manipule scolded her. Her tone implied that she was scandalized, but Bel noticed that hypocritical gorgon hadn’t looked away.
“I think seeing her scars makes her more impressive,” Orseis said.
“Indeed,” Cress agreed, “she has a warrior’s body.”
Maybe Manipule has a point, Bel conceded to herself. She could feel her face growing hot listening to her friends talking about her, so she dove straight into the river. She activated her ability to mix spirits and let Vex’s spirit meld into her own. Her body flattened as it lost its definition and her bones melted away and her legs fused together, leaving her with a flexible form swimming form that would be able to squeeze past tight spaces.
Gills bloomed like wings from her back, spreading into a delicate forest that pulled breathe from the water. Her skin darkened to a deep black while bright green nodules popped up across her body. She reformed her armor so that it wrapped around her body and neck, protecting her core and vital organs without hiding her splendor or hindering her mobility. The vivid green spread along the edges of the flattened, slug-like body, outlining the gliding fringe that ran around her lower section. Frond-like horns sprouted from her head, filling her mind with a new set of senses. Her mouth widened and her teeth became sharp and serrated. She chomped her jaws a few times, trying out the new equipment.
Noises from the shore attracted her attention, and she looked to see several vulnerable creatures waving their appendages at her. She wanted to – no, no, wait, those were her friends. Bel’s friends.
She hesitated, struggling with a sudden identity crisis.
Who am I? Not Bel. Not Vex either. Bex?
Her body undulated and she sank into the water so she could collect her thoughts in the peace of the riverbed.
Does it matter who I am? I was going to go kill a bunch of people, right? Bel and Vex thought that was great, so I must think that’s great too! Here I go!
Identity crisis averted, Bex quickly joined the current, gracefully skimming over the river bottom as she went.
Where are my spiky bits though?
At the thought of her dangerous attachments, a spine shot out from one of her green nodules, piercing through the body of a nearby fish. She instinctively injected something into it, instantly stilling the creature. Bex thought about eating it, but instead she pulled on its essence. The core of the little fish ruptured and a black ooze seeped over its body. Its form melted down and reformed, turning into a small, slug-looking creature with vibrant green warning dots spaced evenly over its body. Gills spring from its back and its fringe rippled as it swam to keep up with her.
Oh, it’s a little me! Lempo’s Path has an ability to spawn spirits, but this is so much better!
She rushed towards the town, eager to spread her own personal plague among her enemies. She speared more fish as she went, rapidly accumulating an army of tiny spirit clones. Making each one took time, but their essence nearly payed for itself! She was elegant and efficient! She could keep swimming and making little minions for a while, she was sure of it.
In short order though, she reached the outer defenses of the town: a metal grate that barred her path. But such an obstacle was nothing before one so perfect as herself! Bex’s boneless body easily squished between the metal bars, and her battalion of contagions squeezed through with her.
Soon! she thought with jubilation. Soon I shall be unleashed!
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Bex dispersed her little minions as she passed through the ever-shrinking water way, sending some to spread into the water pumps that supplied her enemies. The town felt eerily empty and the water unexpectedly clean; it was something that would have weighed upon Bel’s mind, but for Bex it only meant fewer distractions and a lower chance of discovery.
She focused on her own goal as she continued to the heart of her enemies’ stronghold: the garrison’s lavatory. She slipped through a maze of wide brick and clay pipes, searching for the room that she knew would bring her into the midst of her foes in their most vulnerable states.
Alas! Their plumbing was confusing, and she made many wrong turns. Her dwindling essence began to wear at her mind, but she was determined to strike in her foe’s inner sanctum. Then she found a neatly built brick pipe with a wonderfully foul cluster of diseases at its end, and she knew that she had found the way.
She slipped through it and emerged into a dimly lit room with a wide trough of water running along the floor. As her form slowly emerged from the water, she searched the rest of the space from her shadowed corner. Upstream of her, three men were dropping their pants as they sat upon wooden seats. She quietly crept out of the water and onto the stone floor as their clothes settled around their ankles and they began to talk.
“Still, whether it’s by land or by sea, I wish they work up the balls to get it over with. They could at least die with dignity, battling like men rather than surrounded by an army of enslaved scrattes. The little green things will probably eat them in their sleep.”
She moved closer, sly as a sickness.
“I say they hurry it up! It’s not the same here with all the people evacuated.”
“I think you mean with all the whores evacuated. I’ve been seein’ the way you’ve been eyein’ some of the fisher-folk.”
“A man has needs.” A loud fart echoed through the chamber, following by a satisifed sigh. “The fish they’re catchin’ are making my bowels ache, so they should make up for it by soothing my body, right?”
There was a bark of laughter. “Half of them are the Delvers’ women! They’d as soon bite your–”
“Pitiful hosts!” Bex cried as she leaped from her shadowy hiding spot. Her victims’ exploded messily as they shouted in dismay, but she didn’t pause to give them dignified deaths. Spines erupted from her body, piercing the humans through their soft exteriors, quickly killing them with powerful doses of toxins. She ripped the essence from their cores, and the influx of energy revitalized her, but she left some essence behind to spawn more of her minions.
“This is only the beginning,” she chortled. She eased up to the doorway, her frond-like horns tasting the air around the curtain-covered opening.
“By Technis, you three are foul! I can smell you all the way down the–”
The curtain was pulled back, and she came face to face with another one of Technis’ fighters. Then he came face to face with one of her spines as she impaled him through the eye. She pushed his corpse back into the hallway and faced down two more fighting men.
The first one pulled a short sword from his belt and advanced, while the second seemed to be caught in a state of shock and panic. Bel attempted to impale her adversary, but a blue barrier flickered into place in front of him, deflecting her attack, and a quick swing of his weapon lopped off her spine. He stabbed with the backstroke, but Bex leaned back and let it skitter off of her shifting armor.
She hissed at the painful loss of her spine and lunged forward again. This time when his barrier flickered to life she employed two of Bel’s abilities that had so far been useless, unlinking the panes of the barrier and warping them aside. That created a small hole for her spine to stab into the man’s leg.
He collapsed in agony as his flesh turned dark and necrotic, and a few pulses of his heart later her toxins found their way to his vital organs, extinguishing the last dregs of life from his body.
To her disappointment, the man behind him turned and fled.
“Sea monster!” he shouted. “From the sewers!”
I’ll be damned if I let you get away, she thought.
She quickly glided after him…
And he easily outpaced her, turning the corner before she had made it past the body of her recently slain foe.
Oh. I guess this form has some problems on land.
Bex quickly brushed against the last fighter, draining the essence from his core as she considered her options. Before she came up with something clever, a crowd of fighters turned the corner ahead of her. Her eyes opened wide and she spun around.
She forced herself back into the lavatory as quickly as her body could move as the hallway filled with attacks: a couple of spears, an arrow, and a dagger that would have removed a chunk of her backside if she hadn’t liquified her body in time to let it harmlessly path through.
She instinctively dove back into the water, this time travelling against the flow of the current and deeper into the building.
I’ll just have to find somewhere else to emerge, she consoled herself as she swiftly swam through the widening passage.
But then the flow of water reduced to a trickle. They’ve shut off the water!
The pipe shuddered around her and light bloomed to her front. They’re smashing it to find me! Don’t they have any respect for architecture!?
She squeezed into another, long-abandoned pipe to evade capture. Progress down the moldy passage was slow, but she hoped its disuse would mean that it was forgotten. She seemed to be in luck: although she could sense hearts moving around her, none of them attempted to explode her part of the structure.
Then she encountered another problem: the passage ended in a sudden wall. It looked to her that someone had rearranged some rooms, cutting off her current pipe. Her energy was running low again, and she was running short on time in her mixed form. Transitioning back to Bel in her current position would be catastrophic, so she wasn’t left with many options.
The hearts on the other side of the wall didn’t go away – the soldiers seemed determined to continue their search until they found her – but whatever was on the other side of the wall didn’t feel crowded to her. If she was lucky, the soldiers would leave gaps between their patrols and she could take out one group before worrying about the next.
She waited at the dead-end until she felt the hearts of three patrolling soldiers passing by. Then she struck.
Shattered rocks turned into life-ending projectiles as she deconstructed the wall with her shockwave. She felt one heart stop as the rubble crushed its owner, and she reached out to grab a second soldier, gripping his ankle and ripping his feet out from under him. She pulled the daze man close and, before he realized what was happening, she snapped his neck.
Bel dragged herself out of the pipe, but by then the third soldier had recovered from her surprise attack. He wasn’t prepared for a gorgon though; Bex stunned him with her glare and struck her helpless victim with her spines.
Satisfied with her own deadly speed, Bex looked up.
She froze in surprise.
She had assumed that she would exiting the pipe into a room or hallway, but instead she had ascended into the base of the wall that now surrounded Baytown’s garrison. Her back was to the outer wall, and to her front were at least twenty soldiers, their weapons drawn and hungry for revenge. As she hesitated, more soldiers poured into the open courtyard, making her untenable situation even worse.
She twisted back to the pipe opening, but a blast of flames drove her away. Bex spun her metal armor into a large, flat shield to deflect the heat. Then a rain of metal shrapnel pierced her body – she turned liquid to let the projectiles pass through, but her essence was quickly draining. In desperation, she pushed her back against the wall and faced her shield towards the onslaught, hiding like a turtle. It worked, but she knew it was only a temporary measure.
Even as her eyes cast about desperately for any escape route, a heavy block crashed into her shield, driving her back into the wall and pushing her shield out of place. A gout of flame raked along her exposed side, shriveling her malleable body. Her skin blacked before she could use her thermal regulation to spread out the heat or get her shield back into place and she hissed at the pain.
Her mind was still reeling when a spike of stone shot from the ground, forcing her to flow out of the way. She was aware that they were keeping her off balance, wearing her down until she collapsed or a lucky shot got past her armor and liquid body, but awareness didn’t help on its own. The crowd of soldiers guaranteed that she couldn’t run, so they had no reason to risk a direct confrontation.
They had her; she was trapped like a big fish in a tiny pond.
Something wet struck the ground next to her and Bex flinched back from the armed human who had suddenly appeared. It took her startled mind a few more moments to realize that the human was already dead, and judging from the dark, swollen marks around his body he’d been dead even before he fell from the battlements above her.
More bodies joined the first, a steady plop, plop, plop of corpses that interrupted her attackers. Then she saw some of the soldiers in the rings around her bend over and heave before collapsing into messy, eruptive deaths.
The corpse nearest her twitched as something writhed under its skin. The flesh desiccated as she watched, and small, slug-like spirits with dark exteriors and toxic green outlines squeezed out of his mouth.
Bex grinned, taking joy in the little plague that was spreading through the soldiers. She had meant for her little minions to be a distraction for her, but instead she had become the distraction for them. That was fine though, with this she was back in the fight.