Bel felt a tingle of fear jump down her spine at the mention of one of Technis’ inquisitors. She didn’t want to run, but Beth had taught her to be always ready – all of her stuff, which was just a change of clothes, was in a single bag that she brought with her every day. She grabbed it quickly and tossed James’ over to him.
She hesitated though, suddenly remembering Ventas and the village.
“Wait, what about Ventas?” she asked the agitated stranger. “He was just–”
“There’s no time,” the man responded angrily, waving her forward. Bel balked, but the stranger shook his head harshly. “He told me to get you two out of here, before Technis’ forces arrive. We can’t stand around arguing about it!”
He whipped his head back and forth, sending his hair flying as he looked around the woods with wild eyes. “Come, hurry! They could arrive at any moment!”
Bel looked at her brother, but he was just as lost as she was. She swallowed back the familiar and bitter feeling of helplessness. She didn’t have a choice.
She shoved her snakes under her cowl and tugged on her brother’s sleeve to pull him forward as she rushed after the man. He barely waited, immediately setting a fast pace once he saw them taking their first step. Bel blinked pine needles out of eyes as her face smashed through the low-hanging branches, but she ignored her discomfort and focused on their guide’s feet. Wildlife screeched in protest as they barreled through the once peaceful woods.
Bel was much more fit and dextrous than she used to be, gracefully leaping over roots and rocks as they traversed the thickening forest, but now James was the one who struggled to keep up. As they burst into a small clearing of wildflowers, Bel looked back to check on her brother. She was surprised to see him lagging behind. His face was red with exertion and Bel belatedly remembered that her brother hadn’t been able to take the improved lung capacity ability.
James was more fit and well-rested than he’d been in the caves, and he’d been recovering well from his operation, but the run and obstacle course – they had just leaped over a small stream before plunging back into the forest – was too much for him. Leaves and branches slapped at them as they rushed past, as though the forest was trying to drag them apart, so Bel slowed down so she could keep a firm grip on James arm, pulling him forward. She refused to be caught by Technis’ people, but she also refused to let them take her brother.
The young man would have left them behind for certain if he didn’t slow to a jog from time to time to give Bel and James time to catch up. Even so, it didn’t take long before James was barely stumbling forward and wheezing like an old miner.
“Slow down,” Bel shouted, but their guide only responded with a look of irritation.
Once it became clear that Bel wasn’t going to drop her brother, the man did eventually slow. His face pinched with frustration as he rushed back to them. “What are you doing? We must hurry, there’s no time to rest!”
“We can’t move any faster,” Bel bit out. “What’s happening? Is Clearbrook under attack?”
“Yes,” the man snapped. “We need to run.”
“Run where?” Bel resisted. “Why just us? Where’s everyone else? Where is Priest Ventas?”
James pointed at Bel and nodded, too winded to add his own thoughts.
The stranger scoffed. Rather than responding to her questions, he stepped forward and grabbed Bel by the wrist. He tugged as if he planned to drag her through the woods, despite her resistance. She hadn’t noticed before, but he was rather well-muscled for a farmer – and also older than any of the young boys who had remained behind when the rest went out to war.
Bel’s snakes flicked through the air, suddenly wary.
She recognized the look on the man’s face – it was one that she’d seen many times on Technis’ priests. It was a look that said he meant to do her harm.
Bel balled up a fist and let him tug her forward so she could punch him in the gut. His face screwed up in discomfort, but he jerked her off-balance with a quick pivot and an underarm throw that sent her sprawling onto the ground.
James reacted instantly, leaping upon the man and tackling him to the ground with his full weight. They hit the forest floor with a heavy thump, and the stranger was momentarily dazed when his skull collided with a rock. James didn’t hesitate to press his advantage and slam his fist into the deceiver’s face.
Bel’s arm stung where she had sliced it on a sharp rock during her fall, but she didn’t let that slow her down. Her coagulation abilities staunched the bleeding before she even regained her feet.
She drew her weapon as James lashed out; a right hook, a left, a right, and then the man writhed and bucked James off with superhuman strength. Bel slashed down at him with her short sword, but the man whipped his hand through the air to intercept her attack. A small armlet of twisted fiber uncoiled from his wrist and wrapped around her sword, and the man wrenched it out of her grasp in an instant.
Bel did the only other thing that she could do: her snakes rose up, she stared into his eyes, and she glared. He twitched, not quite incapacitated, but distracted by her ability for as long as she could keep it going.
Distracted didn’t mean disabled though – he was still able to take a step towards her and grab her by the wrists again. What he wasn’t able to do was pay attention to his surroundings; James hit him in the back of his head with a solid swing of his fighting stick.
Their attacker was tougher than a normal person had any right to be, but that was obviously because of some ability, not because he was invincible. Bel knelt and grabbed her short sword while James rained blows upon the man’s head, keeping him on the ground. The man let out a feral snarl as his hand flashed out and caught James’ stick in his hand, but Bel simultaneously lunged forward and shoved her weapon somewhere in the vicinity of his spleen.
The man arched his back, flailing his arms to knock her away, but Bel quickly plunged her blade into him a few more times, unsure how much damage would be necessary to make his wounds fatal. James wrenched his weapon free and delivered a two-handed blow to the stranger’s face, once again knocking him to the ground.
Bel put her hands on the man’s neck, waiting for his pulse to stop and ripping away the energy of his core the moment that she felt him slip away. She crossed a threshold – the eighteenth of the twenty that would allow her to form a second core – but this was no time to celebrate.
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She and James stepped back from the corpse, morosely watching as a thick, red pool of blood formed beneath the dead man and was slowly absorbed into the hungry soil. The smell of sweat, blood, and death hung thick in the air, overpowering the sweet, woody scent of the forest.
“Well, damn!” a voice called from behind them, “I thought we were done with the excitement after getting the jump on those other losers, but you three were hilarious!”
Bel spun to see a very… well, Bel didn’t want to be judgemental, especially given her own circumstances, but the person was ugly. And laughing at them.
“The looks of panic on your faces! Stars above!” The woman’s nose – a snout really – twitched. As she laughed at them, Bel wondered if the woman was actually human; her nose was definitely at the end of a dark snout, her eyes were sunken back into her head, her mouth was distressingly broad, and her ears were just little nibs on the side of her head.
Her lower lip didn’t reach out far enough to meet her overlong snout, and when she laughed she revealed sharp, pointy incisors that didn’t belong to any human Bel had ever met. Her dark, nearly black lips were also surrounded by whiskers and every part of her exposed body was covered in hair so thick that Bel would have almost called it fur.
Bel was just getting over her surprise when a second, masculine voice spoke up. “I’m more interested in those snakes.”
Bel patted her head in alarm. With all of the panic she had forgotten to properly cover herself, and now she was revealing that she wasn’t human to a bunch of strangers.
Although I’m beginning to think that they aren’t human either.
She spun slowly to take in the group who had formed a semicircle around her and James. To the right of the woman with the teeth was the man who had just spoken: a tall, slightly more human-looking man with dark hair and a neatly trimmed mustache that sat like a mantelpiece over his blocky jawline. Bel thought that his proper grooming and well-maintained clothes wouldn’t have looked out of place on one of the richer citizens of Baytown, but the gray tail sticking out behind him would have caused some alarm. His bright, yellow eyes were somewhat disconcerting as well.
To the mustached man’s other side loomed a gigantic, hairy man who was, ironically, clean-shaven, with a face so hard and sharp-edged it looked like it could cut. There were other things to observe about him, but for several heartbeats Bel could only focus upon his incredible body hair. He was, in fact, so hairy that she had at first thought that his shirt was weirdly threadbare around his nipples. But no, he was both extremely hairy and very shirtless. Thankfully he had a loose shendyt skirt wrapped around his lower body, so he wasn’t completely naked. Bel wondered if his hair was so prodigious that pants simply refused to fit around them.
She turned to the last person, a blonde-scaled woman who was busy waving two bent metal rods from side to side as she critically examined them. Rather than being scaled like a snake, she had overlapping plates of what looked like large fingernails growing out from her skin. They covered the top of her head, trailed down her back, and, Bel presumed, straight through to the broad tail that was slowly waving from side to side in what Bel decided was excitement.
The scaled woman quickly approached Bel and James with her strange tools before slowly circling around the pair.
“Hey,” James growled, brandishing his fighting stick, “keep your distance.” The woman nodded absently, but continued with her odd examination. James turned his attention to the original speaker.
“Who are you people? And what do you want with us?” he demanded.
“Who are we?” repeated the well-dressed one. “Perhaps I will answer that in a moment.”
He turned to the scaled woman and cleared his throat. “Well, Crystal?”
The woman grunted in response, staring intently at the young gorgon as she waved her tools around.
“Why don’t you answer my question now?” demanded James.
The toothy one scoffed. “Why don’t we just shut you up now instead?”
“Relax, Rikja. Let Crystal do her work.”
The first one, apparently named Rikja, tossed a rock at the scaled woman, finally breaking her out of her state of concentration.
“Ah,” Crystal exclaimed. “Yes, it’s definitely the snakey one! Can’t tell how much, these things are quite finicky. Definitely her though.” Crystal waved her rod-like tools around, and they remained pointing in Bel’s direction. Crystal grinned with triumph. Other than her scales and her slightly curved nails, Crystal looked like a regular human with eye-catching hazel eyes, unblemished skin, and a brilliant smile. Her looks were a sharp contrast with Rikja and the others, who’s inhuman faces Bel found unsettling.
“Told you I could do it,” Crystal proclaimed proudly.
Rikja clacked her teeth in response, but the yellow-eyed man was immediately pleased. A huge grin split his face, making his mustache quiver with excitement and revealing his sharp canines. His eyes never left Bel’s face. She found his actions more than a little creepy.
“Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful! You two simply must join us,” he declared.
“No,” Bel replied immediately.
“Yeah, why would we go with you?” James added.
The man laughed, but in a forced way. “Forgive my excitement. I should have introduced myself first – my name is Nebamon, and these are my compatriots. We are from the Righteous Memory of Truth, a group who fights against Technis’ tyranny.”
“A suspicious group that we’ve never heard of? I don’t think so,” James quipped.
“You do realize that we just saved you from an ambush, right? You barely held out against one of them, but there was an entire group of Technis’ enforcers waiting for you.”
Nebamon gestured at Bel. “You must know that Technis frowns upon non-humans here in Satrap.” He pointed at the members of his own group. “As you can see, we don’t have that same prejudice. Come with us and you’ll be safe.”
“I think I’m okay,” Bel replied stiffly. What she really wanted was to return to Clearbrook and Ventas. She had decided that if the town and its people were truly in danger then she had a responsibility to help.
She looked at the other members of the strange group, but none of them showed any sympathy. Rikja’s sneer indicated that she held actual malice towards them, while the other two seemed indifferent.
James tensed beside her; the strange group immediately shifted their stances in response. Bel thought that they were about to come to blows, but then the mustached man made a slight gesture with his hands and the other two relaxed. Crystal hadn’t noticed the tension. Instead, she continued messing with her tools, slowly drawing closer as she muttered to herself. Bel’s snakes eyed the woman warily as she drifted to the gorgon’s side.
“Let me be honest,” the man started, “we are a small and persecuted group here in Satrap. If you were to go out and get captured by Technis’ forces – which seems quite likely to me – then they could torture you for information about us.”
“But we don’t know anything about you,” James replied with exasperation.
“Ah, but they would think that you did, and wouldn’t hesitate to stoop to torture to squeeze the smallest drops out of you. Even just knowing our numbers and location is a risk, and not just for us, but for all of the people that we work to protect.”
The man fixed his eyes on Bel once again, his eyebrows curving in a show of false emotion. “Please come with us. We only want to get people like you away from Technis. And if there are more of you, we would be glad to help them as well.”
Bel had seen Beth scam enough guards to know that his only intention was to convince her to go with them.
“Hey,” James said in English, “these guys are crazy sus. There’s no way they aren’t some shady secret society or something, striking out when everyone else is busy with war. Hell, for all we know these guys are pulling strings on both sides.”
“I think we know who orchestrated the war,” Bel replied dryly, “and it wasn’t some weirdos running around in the woods. I don’t want to go with them either, but do you think we can actually fight all of them?”
Crystal suddenly poked James in the gut. “Hey, what language is that? Sounds like someone took Satrapian, shoved it in a box with a few extra consonants, shook it up, and dumped it out again.”
James glared at the intrusive woman, but then switched to a more thoughtful expression. “It’s a delving tongue,” he lied. “Popular in some parts of the Labyrinthos.”
“Really?” The woman looked James up and down. “You don’t look like a delver.”
He gestured at the rift. “We’re apprentices, practicing by camping this rift.”
“Oh for Ravager’s sake,” cursed Rikja.
She summoned a small orb of shimmering flames above her hands. “Stop flirting and just come with us if you want to live.”