Bel woke up from a dreamless slumber with a thought-muffling headache. She rolled over and groaned at her bleak surroundings. Her throat was dry, her eyes itched, and her nose was clogged with ash that continually sifted out of the third layer’s atmosphere.

She groaned wordlessly at the ceiling.

“The air is horrible,” she coughed.

“Mmf,” Orseis responded. Bel glanced at her companion to see that the girl had wrapped the scraps of her clothing around her face in an effort to keep out the gritty air.

Bel frowned as she looked down at her mostly unclothed state. The lamellar armor and skirt preserved her modesty – as long as she didn’t kick anything – but they didn’t afford her any way to protect her face from the caustic air.

“Well, let’s get moving,” she wheezed, pointing at a path that hugged the cliff face as it meandered downwards. “Maybe the air is better somewhere else.”

Orseis shrugged her tentacles, clearly not putting much faith in Bel’s words.

With a snort, Bel set off with a long, confident stride, forcing Orseis to rush to catch up.

Bel glanced up as she made her way down the path, eyeing the glowing ceiling warily. I wonder if I should worry about lava rain or something deadly like that. After a moment of worry, she shrugged. Not much I can do about it.

She moved slightly closer to the cliff-face, hoping that it would offer protection from one direction at least.

She and Orseis followed a few twists and turns around the ever widening mountain in silence. The scenery was unchanging, until the latest turn suddenly revealed a closer view of one of the fortresses. Bel stopped short, and Orseis bumped into her with a muffled grunt of dismay.

Bel pointed silently at the sight. From their distance of a few hundred strides they could see that the fortress was hewn from the stones of the mountain itself, polished to an dull sheen and topped with jagged crenelations lined up like the teeth of a shark.

Bel marvelled at the imposing view, but hesitated to approach the foreboding fortress.

“Things haven’t exactly been safe down here,” she muttered to Orseis. “What’s the chance that whoever made this is friendly?”

Her companion shrugged, and the two of them retreated around the last outcropping of rock to get back out of the fortresses lines of sight.

Bel considered for a few moments. “Obviously there are people there, but if they’ve interacted with anyone else it would have been the Dark Ravager’s people. Doesn’t make me eager to meet them.”

Orseis pulled her face covered away from her mouth. “Maybe they expect some kind of payment for safe passage?”

Bel’s expression turned sour. “As in money?”

She peaked back around the rock quickly, chewing on her lip with worry.

Can we go around? Knock on the door and say hello? Stay here and wait to see if someone comes out?

The decision was taken from her when a sudden flurry of movement heralded an imminent attack upon the fortress.

A band of rag-wrapped bipedal creatures – Bel guessed they were scrattes although she couldn’t see any of their features from between their clothes – was attempting an assault. Her eyes widened as they spilled out of numerous mountain caves and filled the rocky field before the fortress.

“There have to be more than a thousand of them, right?” she wondered aloud.

As the lead scrattes approached the fortress, glistening bolts of metal were fired from slits in the wall, casually slicing through the front of the assault. Bel was shocked at the carnage, and equally shocked that none of the scrattes turned back. The mass of the short, angry creatures was great enough that some, perhaps one in ten of the original group, made it to the fortress walls. The survivors tossed weighted chains up the walls, hoping to catch their hooks on the top of the fortress walls. Whenever a chain caught the scrattes immediately began to scale their improvised ladders.

Tall figures in stone armor leaped onto the battlements. They wielded long spears which they stabbed downwards mercilessly onto the climbing scrattes, picking most of them off before they made it even halfway up the wall.

The defenders were giants to the tiny scrattes, and at least half again as tall as Bel, with arms long enough to reach all the way to the ground with their spears.

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The scrattes weren’t completely helpless, and a few swings from their hooked chains managed to snag on a defender and pull them from the walls. Despite the occasional luck though, the scrattes were completely exposed before the stone fortresses and had no way to defend themselves from the spears and arrows of the defenders’ attacks. Within a minute all of the attackers were dead, leaving an ocean of corpses before the fortress, like a wave of bodies frozen in motion.

Bel didn’t know who they were, but she had to admit that the defenders were competent.

Does being competent mean that they’re reasonable? she wondered.

As she ruminated on that thought, the figures jumped from their battlements onto the battlefield. The closest defender was thin, with the look of an uprooted tree covered in metal armaments. They wore a helmet that covered the top of their head and the bridge of their nose, but with an open bottom half that allowed a long, bushy brown beard to roam free down their chest. The others were dressed similarly, and Bel noticed that they all sported the same thick beard, although some others had beards of blonde or red.

Bel assumed that they would drain the essence from the scrattes, but she watched in horror as one of the tall, three stride tall armored figures lifted a corpse into the air and tore it in half. It opened its mouth, its lower jaw unhinging like a snake’s as it spilled the scratte’s green blood onto its face, squeezing the body until it was dry before tossing the dried husk aside.

Bel shuddered.

The creatures were brutal: they bled every dead creature dry with eager efficiency as they batched themselves in the blood and viscera of their enemies. They even included their former comrades in their activities, cracking the taller corpses into a pieces and making off with their armor and weapons. Once they finished their grim work they left, leaping back up to their battlements and leaving the battlefield a mess of pulped bodies.

“Blood and offal.” Bel turned to Orseis. “What the actual–”

Her snakes hissed with alarm – three of the tall cannibals were sneaking up on them, only a few strides away from Orseis’ unprotected back. Bel eyes widened and she blasted the three attackers with glare.

The bearded ambushers froze, their feet scuffing on the ground.

Orseis spun at the sudden noise. Her tentacles snaked around a nearby stone and she flung it at one of the warrior before charging at a second. The rock struck one in the chest, knocking it down, and Orseis and her second victim went flying in a tangle of limbs and tentacles.

Bel reached down for her short sword, but her hand closed around nothing.

“Ah, crows,” she cursed.

The final warrior charged. Bel jumped to the side and glared again, but the warrior turned away, hiding its eyes with an arm. She thought that she’d still dodged its attack, but the long-legged creature’s foot planted onto the loose stones with unnatural grip, allowing it to pivot to Bel in an instant. Before she fully landed the attacker whipped a spear from its back and jabbed it straight into her chest.

A strike like a hammer brought Bel to the ground, but Kjar’s armor didn’t yield to the spear’s sharp point. Bel fought for control of her shocked body, but before she could lever herself upwards she was slammed to the ground again by the monster’s spear.

Seemingly incensed beyond reason by her impervious armor, the creature continually slammed its spear onto Bel’s chest with a furious snarl. The tip of the spear began to glow, shooting out sparks as it contacted Bel’s armor.

Bel snapped her arms up to grasp the glowing spear and she liquified the shaft on her attacker’s next thrust. She bent the suddenly flexible weapon, aiming the point straight at the creature’s face. Her attacker’s eyes widened as it fell downwards, but without the expected impact it lost its balance. It attempted to push the spear away, but Bel continued to pull upwards on the point, flexing the weapon until the tip pierced through the eye slit on her attackers armor.

The body twitched and writhed, but Bel felt it’s control over its core slip away after a moment. She didn’t hesitate to grab it by the wrists and rip its essence out, finishing it. She felt her cores grow, but she didn’t have time to concentrate on that. She kicked the surprisingly light body off and scurried to her feet, wielding the now fishhook-shaped spear.

Orseis was pinned against the cliff wall, throwing a continual barrage of small rocks at her remaining attacker while trying to keep away from its glowing spear. The cuttlefish girl seemed dazed, and uncoordinated, and Bel could see a large amount of blood spilling down the side of her face.

Bel took a step forward, but jerked with surprised she saw a sudden flurry of movement coming down the cliff face. She glanced up just in time to see several hairy, green scrattes leap down onto the tall warrior and begin hacking it to pieces.

Unlike the ones who had assaulted the fortress, these ones were mostly naked save for the small sheets of metal that protected their vital areas. One of them turned to her and Bel’s eyes were immediately drawn to a small, darkened effigy of some many-limbed creature with deep, red eyes.

She stared at it for a moment before looking up at the wearer. The scratte looked like any other – short, green, and hairy – but it stared at her with an excited fervor that looked more religious than the hungry expression she’d seen on the others that she had encountered.

Bel took a step forward, her hands tightening around her misshapen weapon.

“Leave my friend alone,” she demanded.

The scratte grinned, revealing a row a needle sharp teeth. It lifted the disquieting effigy and made a series of high-pitched rasps in her direction.

“That’s my mom… that’s Lempo, isn’t it?” Bel asked.

The scratte made more awful noises, but approached Bel without hesitation, pulling its religious symbol from around its neck and thrusting it in Bel’s direction. Bel looked into the red eyes of the many-armed thing and weakness suddenly overtook her body. Bel watched the world tilt as she fell over…

…and fell into the darkness.

“Hello daughter,” a thousand voices called out, “you have been moving too slowly.”

A many-limbed ball of eyes and teeth landed in front of Bel and immediately began shifting, limbs stretching and twisting, eyes sinking and disappearing, until the shape finally settled upon the blond-haired form of Lempo that had been popular in Satrap.

“I have arranged help to speed your journey,” Lempo announced.

“The scrattes?” Bel asked, incredulous.

“Any tool that swings,” she replied quickly. Then the goddess tilted her head and tapped her chin. “That is a human saying, is it not? Or have I confused the mortals again? I am trying my best to be – what did Kjar call it? – more normal for you.”

She gestured down at her glowing body. “Let me know how I am doing.”