Outside Influences

A small part of Bel knew that she was throwing a tantrum. The wasps weren’t supporting Technis; he had clearly taken an ability from them that he found useful, but it wasn’t as thought they were conspiring together. But when Bel saw the wasps dragging their prey inside of their nest’s barrier she couldn’t help but see Technis dragging the humans into Satrap. The humans weren’t chewed to pieces first, but they were no better off than fodder for Technis’ schemes.

Bel could see the differences, but she was too angry to care. She slammed her leg into the dirt, channeling her power into the stone beneath it and sending a shockwave of superheated rock through the ground. It emerged as a spray of glowing rock and lava that killed any insects in its path before crashing into the barrier. The blue shield warped and flickered, but quickly came back at full strength.

Bel howled in fury. Her body burned hot enough to glow and the recklessly threw herself against the barrier with wild abandon, but with no result. She took a step back, her rational mind asserting itself when her anger came up short.

Beside her there was another impact from one of the flaming remnants of the tree spirit; it had joined in with her fury and was aimlessly slashing at the barrier with its flaming limbs. Bel instinctively reached out to the other spirit. Her fingers brushed against its burning trunk and its form became liquid. It flowed into her and she could feel its disorganized thoughts swirling against her own. It needed a form and a purpose, something to anchor it to the physical world.

So Bel imagined the horned magma bear that she had met on the third layer. As the thought solidified she felt it resonate with the spirit. It’s body warped around her and her arms became heavy as her hands swelled into massive paws.

The other spirits, still wandering aimlessly after their tree form had split apart, were eager to reform around a solid idea. They swarmed to her, pulling and melting stones as they went, piling into her growing form. Bel felt her body born into the air on the body of a hastily formed creature of heat and magma. Her ideas fused with the spirits as their thoughts mixed. Her form grew more solid and defined. She soon floated in the chest of a bear five times her height, with horns as long as she was tall and paws large enough to smash a giant.

They became an entity of one thought and purpose: to burn the insects and consume their sweet essence. The Bel-bear reared back on their hind legs, standing nearly half as tall as the barrier around the nest, opened their mouth, and roared. As they came crashing down to all fours, the spirit beast swiped a massive paw down onto the barrier.

The Bel-bear’s heart sang as the barrier shattered in a burst of light.

Inside was a multi-layered structure, narrowing towards the top like a decadent tiered cake, stacked high with creatures full of essence. They licked their chops as they surveyed the defenders.

Each layer was a papery disk joined to the adjacent layers by small pillars of the same material, and every bit of space was filled with furious wasps. Hundreds took flight, but their presence barely slowed the spirit bear. It was made of heat and rock and impervious to stings and bites – and even if it wasn’t, the wasps fared poorly once they were on fire.

They roared in delight as they crashed through the press of insects, tossing their buzzing bodies aside before tearing into the hive and consuming the sweet stores of essence and larva. The air was filled with the scent of smoke and burning hive, filling the Bel-bear with a sense of pride and accomplishment. This is what fire does! they thought triumphantly.

In the face of an unstoppable threat, the wasps burst into frenetic motion, grabbing the contents of their storage cells and making into the air ahead of the Bel-bear’s rampaging form. The bear reared up and bellowed in anger.

How dare these things run! They need to burn! I need to eat them!

The spear bear expelled a large blast of living fire, a host of small spirits that leaped from target to target leaving destruction in their wake. The bear, slightly diminished from expelling its own spirit-body, sat back on its haunches and observed the flames’ progress with satisfaction. It reached forward with a massive paw and shoved more of the hive into its maw, quickly burning the material into essence to grow its form.

Another creature – also winged, but not one of the wasps – flew up to its face. The Bel-bear stared in idle curiosity and faint recognition, but wasn’t sure what to make of the winged snake lady who was hovering around. The creature was making rhythmic mouth noises that were tantalizingly familiar, but it couldn’t quite remember the purpose they served. Another creature – some little, multi-limbed person – made some noises at the flying one. The spirit bear looked back at the flying person just in time to see her cup her hands in front of her face and shriek.

Bel was blasted from the middle of the giant bear, her body ripped away from the spirits by the force of Cress’ attack. She slammed into the ground hard enough to shatter the stones beneath her, but she was in such a daze that she didn’t notice. Did I turn into a giant magma bear? she wondered dazedly. Did I just eat a bunch of paper and goop? Am I going to throw up?

Bel looked up at the towering creature of flame of liquid stone – now with a large hole in its middle – and watched as it teetered unsteadily on its massive paws. Without her providing the spirits with a cohesive sense or self and a form to take, it began breaking apart. Strange approximations of burning wasps took off into the woods while some other spirits took on the forms of molten rocks and sank into the soil. After a minute of confusing form shifting, the spirit had mostly dispersed, although a few burning bushes and pools of lava lingered in the charred field.

The hive stood empty, partially smashed, mostly burned, and wholly abandoned. The only thing left piles of crisped wasps. Orseis strolled up to one and cracked it open, happy to help herself to the cooked meals.

“So,” she said, waving half a wasp around at the destruction, “are you going to help dig through all these cores and figure out how their barrier works? Or are you just going to lie there?”

Bel grimaced. Her head hurt and her core felt raw and empty. “I can’t get up,” she moaned.

The charred ground crunched under Orseis’ feet as she walked over. “That magma bear was great, by the way. I didn’t know you could do that. Did you?”

Bel weakly shook her her head. The expression came out as little more than a twitch, but she was too tired to use words.

“Well, even if you didn’t,” Orseis continued cheerily, “I thought it was great. I think you really impressed your gorgon friend too.”

Bel mustered the energy to glance at Cress and was mortified to find the woman staring back with wide eyes. The other gorgon’s sand-colored snakes fanned out around her head, standing at high alert.

“It was all Sparky’s fault,” Bel cringed, “I would never throw that kind of tantrum.”

Cress tilted her head, obviously not following Bel’s words. Her little magma snake, though, slithered into view and flicked its tongue out indignantly. Bel grimaced. Sparky was right, she had wanted to embrace the excitable snake’s temperament. Bel closed her eyes and hoped that if she couldn’t see the real world then it wouldn’t be able to find her. Why did I have to turn into a giant, rampaging bear? And why did things have to end up with Cress knocking me out of it? I must have looked like a little kid throwing a tantrum.

There was blessed silence for a minute, long enough for Bel’s pounding headache to recede to a dull throb, before Orseis spoke again. “Seriously though,” she said as she surveyed the bounty of insects, “there are actually too many for me to eat. You’re going to have to help look through their cores, okay Bel?”

Bel groaned and squeezed her eye tightly shut. “Make someone else do it.”

“Like who?” Orseis said, incredulous. “Your little flower snake? She seems eager.”

“Flora?” Bel cracked her eye open and saw that her calmer, better behaved snake was staring into the Heart of Olympos. “That’s probably bad for your eyes, Flora,” Bel scolded her. The snake gave her a side-eyed glance like she was an idiot.

Orseis prodded her with a large wasp mandible. “Come on, the scavengers are going to eat everything.”

Flora slithered down Bel’s face and clamped onto the severed jaw. She gave Bel a significant look.

“Do you think you can help, Flora?”

“I don’t think turning into a tree will help, Bel. Aren’t you all drained of essence anyway?”

“It couldn’t hurt, Ori. And I ate so much, my core is bigger and halfway full. My snake probably has an idea.”

Orseis waved her tentacles angrily. “I swear to, uh, Deception I guess, that if you turn into a tree just so you can ignore me better, I’m going to chop you down with my spear.”

Bel ignored Orseis and hauled herself to her feet. She felt a little dizzy, and her body was sore, but nothing seemed terribly wrong. “I’ll pay attention, I promise.”

Bel stretched her arms up into the sky and mixed spirits with Flora. Bark grew over her head and spread down her body, stiffening her in place. Leaves sprung from her hands, reaching up to the sky and drinking in the light. When the transformation reached her bare feet, Bel could feel small roots growing into the ground.

The idea is creepy, but the soil feels nice and warm.

Bel basked in the rays of the Heart as her roots dug through the tasty soil. When she encountered the first wasp, her roots burst from the soil and punctured its exoskeleton. They slowly dug through the flesh until they found the core. It was squeezed into essence and transported back to her through her tube-like root system.

Bel was worried that she’d lost any of the abilities during the process, but the energy arrived she realized that some bits of the pattern remained. She let her roots keep growing outwards, pulling in bits of essence and fragments of the wasp’s abilities as they went. Orseis sprint past the radius of her search, desperate to claim a few more insects for her stomach.

Bel smiled at her friend’s antics, but then noticed Cress’ intense gaze. Bel quickly looked away, pretending to be fascinated by her searching roots. Maybe turning into bears and trees isn’t weird in the underworld, she tried to console herself.

Cress marvelled at Bel’s tree form as it efficiently gathered up the wasps’ resources. She had to hold herself back from clapping or she would embarrass herself; it was just so refreshing to see a gorgon willing to be so quirky and impulsive. The rest of us are truly stuck in the mud, she lamented to herself.

When Bel had first attacked the hive Cress had been worried that she was going into some kind of fit, but now it was obvious that she needed to extract information about the wasps’ abilities. It made perfect sense. Cress even wondered if the wasp’s barrier was somehow similar to the one that Bel was attempting to slip underneath.

Her snakes rattled with excitement at the thought of their journey to the surface, and Cress was forced to calm herself before her snakes got too silly. Getting to the surface had always been her goal, but now it was so close! And not only that, she also had the aid of a goddess and her divine avatar!

Cress grinned unconsciously at the thought of Lempo’s offer. I wonder if the other gorgons know about it yet?

She would be a disappointed if she missed their initial surprise, but she suspected that would last a while. They would reach the Free City of Walls in less than a day’s travel. If she went right to the gorgons’ part of the city she couldn’t imagine that the surprise would have died down.

Cress tapped her chin in thought. We’ll need to recruit some of the gorgons to come with us, of course. None of them were interested when I went there by myself, but I’m sure that they’ll be convinced once they meet Bel.

She nodded to herself as she observed Bel for a few moments. Then her eyes strayed to the tentacled one, Orseis, as she crammed burned wasps into her face. Cress’ brown crinkled as she once again tried to figure out what the strange girl had to do with either the gorgons or Bel’s sacred mission. Once again she came up with a blank.

I’ll need to practice Bel’s language as we walk. Pointing at things could only take them so far, and eventually Cress would need to understand all of Bel’s plans. She also wanted to know a bit more than whichever gorgons she could convince to join them. Not that she wouldn’t welcome more of her sisters, but she couldn’t help but feel a little worry worming its way into her head. Cress hadn’t thought that she wanted to be special – if she found a way to improve every gorgon’s life, then wasn’t that good enough? But the thought of one of the risk-averse hideaway gorgons got her snakes rattling.

She wanted to find young, idealistic gorgon to go to the surface. If they were going to start a new community far away from the prejudices of the underworlders, then they should start it without any of the gorgons that held them back for so long.

She tapped her chin again. That was what she wanted at least – she couldn’t be sure about Bel’s plans. She could only hope that the other gorgon’s love of change and progress was just as strong, or stronger, than her own.