Outside Influences

Bel’s head resonated like a drum with each syllable coming from the goddesses’ mouth. Like a clogged drain violently cleaned, Kjar’s booming words brought clarity to Bel’s mind. She felt invigorated and whole in the mighty deity’s presence.

The Dark Ravager and his followers, however, had a different reaction. The dark beetle scuttled backwards until his feet against the edge of the ring of purple flames that lined the chamber. His priests scattered, literally falling over one another in their haste to make it to an exit.

“You,” he sputtered through his twitching mouth parts, “you cannot be here! It is forbidden!”

Kjar laughed and the room shook with her breaths. “Unbalancing the spirits of the moons is forbidden,” she corrected. “But any mortal may summon a deity if they are powerful enough.”

“But I did not–”

“Hi!” Dutcha shouted, waving and pointing excitedly to herself. “Technically mortal! We spirits never signed the treaty!”

The fiery spirit shook her finger. “It’s why we were banished to the moon in the first place you know.”

The Dark Ravager quivered with rage for a moment. Then, faster than Bel could process, his wings snapped open and a hundred beams of violent light shot out like spears at Kjar, Dutcha, and Bel.

Kjar roared. Reality bent. The beams shattered as if they’d been made of ice. The red lines and ring of purple flames extinguished and the Dark Ravager was tossed backwards to slam into the wall of the room. The angry almost-god flapped his wings angrily as he landed.

“I shall ascend!” he screeched angrily. “I am at the cusp!”

“But I judge you guilty,” Kjar growled. She inhaled, and a heat radiated from her that was so intense Bel could feel her skin tightening.

The Dark Ravager scurried backwards and blasted into the wall with a complex shape of bundled light. The wall disintegrated and the oversized beetle leaped into the sky.

Kjar exhaled a blast of blinding fire that flooded the far side of the room and violently ripped open an entire side of the pyramid. Bel saw the flood of flames consume the Dark Ravager’s form, but then he fell out of her sight.

The lion-headed goddess clapped her hands with satisfaction. “Excellent. I enjoy a chase. Perhaps I will dispense more justice to his accomplices as I play.”

Kjar leaped through the opening that she’d created, her body leaving a streak of light as she moved.

Bel stared, slack jawed.

“W–what?” The sudden stillness was just a shocking to Bel as the sudden action. “What’s happening?”

Dutcha’s burning form glanced down at Bel, and the spirit gasped.

“Oh no! Little Bel! You look like shit!”

Bel stared up at the burning spirit of chaos. She was so insulted that her mind went completely blank. For a few moments the two of them stared at one another. The faint sounds of explosions and screams filtered in from the hold in the wall.

Dutcha stilled her flames, turning into a lightly smoldering figure of granite with burning hair. “Let me get you out of there, okay?” She grasped Bel’s restraints and shattered them with a twitch of her fingers. Bel slumped to the floor.

Dutcha instantly evaporated and reformed with her hands under Bel’s body. She stood, hoisting the gorgon into the air like a baby. “That was rough quest, wasn’t it?” she asked cheerfully. “That pretty much settles everything Kjar wanted though, and I’m half settled. Just focus on what your mom wants and your future will be filled with wonderful excitement!”

Bel groaned. “I could do with less excitement. And what do you mean I did what you and Kjar wanted? Was I just bait?”

The spirit hummed for a moment. “Yeah, you were! But hey, blame your mother instead. She’s a patient, scheming sort of goddess.”

Dutcha shrugged. “I can’t really blame her, you’ve got to scheme a bit to really change the world. And hey, I’m free! So far, so good!”

Bel stared into the spirit’s face. “Free?”

Dutcha nodded. “Yeah, they banned me from the mortal plane, claiming that I caused too much trouble.”

“I get that–I mean, how did you convince Kjar and Lempo to let you back here?”

Dutcha laughed. “Oh, I’m just waiting. I promised not to cause too much trouble until then. I’ll go find a nice, remote island and melt it into slag or something.”

The chaotic spirit straightened and spun around, whipping Bel’s snakes around from the force. The terrified gorgon hung on to the spirit for dear life, her thoughts and questions whipped into incoherence.

“Let’s go have some fun!”

The spirit strode off towards original exit to the room, a large square opening in the stone wall. As she walked she created chaos. Small salamanders of burning flame dropped from her legs and melted through the floor, spirits of mist and air sprung from her breath, and where her feet met the ground the stones themselves rose up before lumbering off.

Bel finally found her voice. “What is going on?”

The floor crumbled beneath them, dropped them into the midst of a small group of robed cultists. The spirit grew several new arms and used them to toss orbs of glowing energy down the hallway; whenever they struck, a person would splatter into a puddle of organs and flesh. Then the flesh would reassemble itself, get up, and amble away. Bel was absolutely terrified.

What if Dutcha decides it would be fun to squish me into goop?

Dutcha hummed as she skipped down the hallway. “Well,” she warbled, “isn’t this nice? Kjar wanted to do some justice and I wanted to wreak some havoc.”

“A–and what does Lempo… my mother, what does she want from me?” Bel stammered. I finally have someone who can answer my questions, even if they’re a murderous spirit of chaos. I’ve got to ask.

Dutcha grinned so widely that her stone face nearly split in half. Bel thought it looked terrifying. “Yup, she’s got plans for you. She’s taught me a lot about planning, you know?”

Dutcha held up a hand and a tentacle and started ticking things off. “Like, chaos is great. But, if you do too much at once then there’s nothing left to chaos. So you’ve got to space things out.”

The spirit looked Bel in the eye, waiting for a response.

“Uh, yeah, that sounds… uh, smart?”

“I know, right?” Dutcha grinned again and ticked off a second point. “So now I wait for things to get complicated before messing them up. It’s like, uh, baking your cookies before you eat them.” The spirit’s face scrunched. “Or something like that. To be honest, I don’t understand baking. People do weird things.”

She looked down at Bel and her eyes widened. “Oh, which reminds me, you need to learn to be less human. That way you’ll be able to fix your head and stuff.”

“My head?” Bel reached up and felt her injuries for the first time. There was a painful gash going through the right side of her forehead down and through her left eye, and the three snakes on the right side of her head were gone–she was nearly half bald. The rest of her snakes were wisely cowering away from everything that had been happening.

Dutcha formed another limb and poked Bel in the head. “Yeah, so, I couldn’t really fix your body. It turns out that your mom isn’t great and making life, you know? And Kjar is like…”

The spirit shrugged. “So I just stuck some spirits on there.”

Dutcha rubbed Bel’s bald spot. “You should be able to get some more spirits to fix that up. You could try and replace your eye too, maybe? I’m not sure, like I said, I don’t really understand human things very well.”

“But I thought I was a gorgon?”

“Yeah, sure, human, gorgon, same thing. They’ve both got what, organs and emotions and stuff?”

Dutcha touched a wall and the stones turned into a tangled bunch of stoney snakes that hissed and slithered away. Then she leaped through the opening and into the midst of a panic of people running around a wide open room. The space was already filled with charred stones and had several holes melted in the walls, obvious signs that Kjar had recently passed by.

Dutcha strode through the chaos, tentacles bursting from her back to slash and decapitate as she continued walking.

“Oh,” she said, over the cries and screams of the dying, “don’t try to grab one of these little spirits that I’m spawning. They’re gonna to be too, uh, feisty. Grab some that resonate with you.”

Bel looked at a watery fish that was somehow flying through the air. It stabbed a running man through the chest and emerged from the other side, now tinted a deep red, before splitting into to two fish and seeking out new targets.

“Feisty?”

Dutcha sighed. “Yeah, you’re teensy. These ones are probably too powerful for you. Or, you know, you could get more powerful.”

Dutcha held up her hands and Bel felt an intense pull. All of the cores of the people in the rooms shattered and their essence flowed into the powerful spirit. She smiled like a person basking in a warm breeze. “Power is nice to have, just so you know.”

“Yeah,” Bel replied, “I get that.”

Dutcha nodded, pleased with her own teaching. “Speaking of powerful beings, I think your auntie probably wants to talk with you before they pull her back.”

The overpowered spirit walked up to a blank wall, and dissolved it into a grainy liquid with a touch. Bel recognized the source of her own liquify, but executed at a power far out of her own grasp.

The ground was easily more than a hundred strides away down the angled slope of the building. Without even a flicker of hesitation, Dutcha jumped. Bel yelped and reflexively clutched onto greater spirit’s arm, but Dutcha quickly formed a pair of wings and glided to the ground, landing as gently as a kiss.

She laughed at Bel’s reaction and ruffled the gorgon’s remaining head snakes. “Okay, Beloved of Lempo, second mommy’s going to go off and have a good time. There’d better be absolute mayhem the next time we meet, or you’ll be in trouble, miss.”

“Uh, I–”

Dutcha dropped Bel on the ground and sprang into the air. Her body twisted and expanded, and in a moment Bel found herself watching a storm as is rapidly receded towards the horizon. The living weather phenomenon was alternating between raining water and raining fire as it went, with occasional sprays of ice and stone.

A flicker of motion from the corner of Bel’s vision caused her to turn. She shrieked with surprise and nearly fell over when she realized that Kjar had returned; the impossibly tall, terrifyingly dangerous goddess had appeared from seemingly nowhere to breath down her neck.

Bel did her best to stand up straight and look respectful – it was difficult with her torn and bloody clothes and the dried blood coating her face. She stared at the goddess with trepidation, worried about what was coming next.

The goddess flicked some gore from the tips of her claws and licked them clean while Bel stared.

“That felt good,” the goddess purred. She stretched languidly. “I will be ready for a nap after this.”

Kjar gestured to the destruction around them and Bel turned to the sight. The Dark Ravager’s pyramid had been reduced to a burning, melting hill of stone.

“I have taken care of the most guilty ones here,” the goddess explained. “That leaves some for you to clean up. I think that you will find the exercise to be rewarding.”

“Oh, uh, thanks.”

“Retribution is necessary,” Kjar intoned, “if you wish to change the world for the better. It serves two purposes: first, to remove the offender and prevent further transgressions, and second, to serve as a deterrent for others. Only with the constant and consistent application of punishment has humanity created social change that is lasting.”

Bel was certain that Kjar, being the embodiment of corporal punishment, was biased. She wasn’t wrong though, at least as far as Bel could tell.

“I understand,” Bel replied. Not like she was going to disagree with the goddess who had just laid waste to a city’s worth of people after burning their demigod to a crisp.

“Excellent.”

The goddess stepped back to examine Bel. Her feline features twitched, exposing a row of sharp teeth, and her eyes narrowed. “You look terrible. I am no goddess of fashion, but it is clear to me that these rags are unacceptable.”

Bel inspected her bedraggled condition. She’d lost her boots somewhere, and her pants were more rip than seam. Her shirt was stained with sweat and blood, and barely covered her body anyway. The linen of her breastband showed through her torn up shirt, and she could see that it was literally hanging on by a few threads. If James could see her current condition he might even call her lewd.

She looked up to explain her sorry state to the goddess, but Kjar had disappeared.

Bel spun around, looking for the missing deity, but instead all she saw was destruction. Kjar had laid waste to everything. There were smoking piles of ash, smoldering rubble, and deep craters in every direction. The pyramid itself, which would have been the most impressive structure Bel had every encountered, was continuing its rapid disintegration and was now several impressive mounds of irregular bricks. Dutcha’s power to liquify things didn’t seem to fade with time and Kjar had blown away large portions of the stone building, bringing about a continual inwards collapse.

Bel tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. The might of the gods was terrifying.

The air shimmered and the goddess returned. Bel couldn’t tell if she had bent the rules of the world, or if she simply moved so quickly for Bel’s mortal eyes.

“Here.” Kjar held up a large barrel of water and upended it over Bel’s head.

“Gaah!”

Kjar mercilessly scrubbed at Bel’s body, tearing off her rotten clothes as she went. Bel did her best to struggle, but she was helpless before the determined goddess. When Kjar finally released the young gorgon she collapsed on the ground, still sopping wet, but now fully clean.

Kjar gazed down upon her without pity.

“Kjar, why?” Bel wailed.

Kjar’s eyes burned like two new suns, heating Bel until she was dry.

“Now for some better clothes,” the goddess decreed. She disappeared once again.

Bel blinked and Kjar was back, now holding several sets of clothing. Bel tried to not think about where the goddess had procured them.

The goddess held one thing up after another, discarding several until she seemed satisfied. Then she ran her hands over the garments scratching tiny, intricate markings onto the leather and metal with a speed that Bel could scarcely track. Her claws left glowing lines of fiery red that slowly faded to a dull glow. Once she was done, she held out the bundle and shoved them into Bel’s arms. “Put these on.”

Bel thought about arguing – she really did – but she wasn’t suicidal. If the murder goddess wanted to play dress up then she would do it. Bel donned the clothes: a comfortable, mundane, shirt covered by an uncomfortable but faintly glowing lamellar body armor with palm sized metal plates joined together to cover her body and shoulders. On her lower half she donned loose leather pants and a heavy lamellar skirt that Kjar impatiently fastened around her waist.

“Why am I dressed for war?” Bel wondered aloud.

“You have the remaining cultists to kill, revolutions to start, and your mother’s quest.”

Kjar took a step back and examined Bel. “It is too bad that your snakes will get in the way of a helmet, but the rest is passable. You should grow claws. Why have you not done that yet?”

“Goddess – Kjar – can I ask a question?”

One of Kjar’s ears flicked. “Yes. Of course. Be aware that my time with you is limited.”

“What does my mother want me to do?”

“To kill Technis of course. And some other things as well, but she feels it best for you to discover those on your own.”

“That’s kind of what I thought. Why though? And will I get help?”

Kjar’s ear flicked once again with annoyance. “Your mother feels that he violated the spirit of an agreement when he locked you into a basement. Now she would like you to fix the situation since you were the one who was wronged.”

Bel stared. “So she wants me to kill a god? Why doesn’t she do it herself?”

Kjar gestured to the surrounding destruction. “I am a well understood force, and the pantheon will barely tolerate my presence on this mortal plane for a brief period. You mother, the goddess of upheaval, is much less predictable and, dare I say, less trusted. There would be opposition to her making an appearance in what is supposed to be a resource planet that the pantheon shares.”

“A resource – no, wait, how can I kill a god? That’s impossible. I’m just a mortal.”

Kjar chuckled. “Who has told you that Technis is a god?”

“Everyone. Well, everyone in Satrap.” Bel stared. “Wait, are they lying?”

Kjar laughed heartily, her fangs gleaming in the sinister light of the still burning pyramid.

“But still,” Bel protested, “how can I even get through the Barrier? How–”

Kjar held up a hand. “Lempo would prefer that you find your own solutions. I am more practical, so I will give you an answer: go under it.”

“Oh.”

“Now, before you go charging off, I suggest that you do as Dutcha instructed. Find some spirits, repair your body, and grow stronger before you fight Technis.”

Bel rubbed at the bald spot on the right side of her head. “Can I take as long as I want?”

“No.” Kjar looked into the distance. “Technis will move beyond your reach if you tarry too long.”

Bel waited for more explanation, but the goddess offered nothing more. “And then what? Would my – would Lempo be angry? Would she eat my soul?”

Kjar rubbed at her cheek with one of her clawed hands as she considered her answer. “Well, if it came to it, Lempo may decide to descend to the mortal plane and solve the problem herself – over the pantheon’s objections of course.”

“…and then what?” Bel asked tremulously.

Kjar shrugged. “Satrap is destroyed? This continent? This world? Or perhaps the pantheon will simply wipe all of this away to preemptively remove any temptation for your mother to descend.”

Kjar gestured around with an open hand, suggesting to Bel that “all of this” meant far more than just Satrap.

Kjar gazed up at the moons and the ring above them. “It was before my time, but a previous incarnation of change nearly wiped out life on the Old World. It was one of the compelling arguments for the pantheon to leave it in peace.”

Her piercing eyes bored into Bel’s timid gaze. “And why we built Olympos. It keeps us occupied in the Old World’s stead.”

“So… change is bad?”

Kjar shrugged. “Change is change. Humans would not exist had Change not wrought death to the great flightless birds that once ruled the Old World.”

The goddess placed a heavy hand on Bel’s small shoulder. “However, I do not find so much fault with this world that I would wish it be to wiped away. Take sufficient time to gather your strength, but do not take so long that Technis moves beyond your reached and Lempo herself intervenes. Gather your essence and grow quickly.”

Kjar grinned, revealing a row of sharp teeth. “And good luck.”

The goddess vanished, leaving Bel alone amidst the destruction. The overwhelmed gorgon collapsed to the ground, exhausted.